Love or Money
by whereistruth
Summary: Jack's presumptuous nature brings him face-to-face with a down-on-her-luck literature lover with nothing to lose and nothing to leave behind. NOW COMPLETE!
1. Funloving

            He'd done it again, damn him to the blazes.  This time, she wasn't going to take it.  She'd had about enough of it, and if she ended up hanged for killing him, she'd not count herself lacking.  Barely restraining herself from shouting his name into the crowds, she slogged through the rainwashed streets, holding her already filthy skirts closer to her.

            The bodice of her dress pressed too tightly as she took in a deep, damp breath.  The chill was prickling the bare tops of her bosoms and her bare arms, and she knew if she didn't find him soon, she'd end up ill.

            "Philip, you idiot," she said under her breath, stepping up to the inn and looking in the windows.  The cheap, warped glass with its inch-deep film of dirt made it hard to see, but she was sure that was him sitting by the bar.  Tilting her chin in the air, she started for the doors.

            She was stopped just short of the doors, swung about in a wide circle as an arm anchored about her waist, a warm, heavily sinewed hand clasped possessively on her hip.  The momentum she'd gathered to walk in the inn swung them both around, and she already had her hands up to push at her captor.

            "Hello, love," the man slurred, completing the arc by cinching her close to his side.  "Such a lovely night, it is, that I got to feelin' lonely, and I says to meself, 'Jack…'" he trailed off for a moment, his dark eyes wide, reflecting the moonlight and making them glow.  He pursed his lips slightly and lowered his head, the wide, almost black eyes staring into her own light brown ones.  "'_Captain_ Jack,'" he corrected, "'It seems you ought to find y'self some… company for the evening.'" 

            Wonderful, Amelia thought.  Only in seeking a drunk were you likely to be assailed by one.  "I'm not your company for the evening," she enunciated, noting with mingled curiosity and distaste the sheer number of things he had twined into his hair.  A pang of longing went through her, and her hand reached up to tangle in her own sable hair.  The newly-shorn tresses would barely fall to her shoulders when released from the haphazard mess they'd been pinned into.  

            "Oh, right, right," he said suddenly, stepping back from her with an exaggerated toe-heel step, his arms flung wide in acquiescence.  "Ye'd like a bit of something in return.  I know the procedure, madam, been through it thousands of times."  Tipping her a wink just as exaggerated as his walk, he extracted a small pouch from his trousers and untied the leather thong keeping it shut.  The glitter of coins caught her eye and knowledge, horrifying and embarrassing, shot through her.  She was stricken completely speechless by his implications, unable to correct him as he continued to speak.

            "So what do we say, love?  I've got the coin, provided you possess the—"  He let his gaze drop to her breasts, the target of his stare more than obvious.  Clearing his throat, he brought his eyes back to hers.  "Time," he finished the sentence. 

            Insulted, Amelia shoved at him, expecting him to stagger, but he stood firm, only wavered a bit in his stance.  What sort of man talked as though he'd fallen into a barrel of ale, gesticulated as wildly as any lunatic, but didn't smell of drink and didn't stagger a bit?  "I'm not a whore," she shouted.  "Are you mad?"

            To her amazement, he chuckled.  He was actually laughing at her.  "Love, let's take a look at you.  I've more covering on my legs than you've on your entire body, and though it's sure to be an attractive part of town, it's not an attractive part of town, savvy?"  Clapping a hand to her shoulder, he lowered his face to hers confidentially, giving her the full benefit of those dark-rimmed eyes.  She thought fleetingly that Marlowe's Mephistopheles must have had eyes quiet like those, rimmed in soot and wickedly charming, amused and cold at the same time.  "So now that we've taken a look-see, shall we try and see the situation as I see the situation, and trust me, I do see the situation quite well.  And it is… quite well."  He winked again, salacious this time rather than playful.

            He could have done no worse than to bring up her state of dress.  It was a sore point with her, driven directly by pride.  "I'm a laundress, you bloody git, not a whore.  Though I can tell by the looks of you that a laundering is beyond your imagining, whereas a whore is not."  She spoke through her teeth, shrugging off his hand roughly.  "And if it so happens that I'm too poor to wear naught but that which I've outgrown, it's no business of yours."  She crossed her arms over her chest, struggling with the embarrassed tears that wanted to fall.  "I may be poor, _Captain," she stressed the title sarcastically, "But that doesn't make me common."_

            No, no, he was starting to see that all too clearly now.  She spoke as one educated.  He hadn't heard speech like that since… well, it had been several months since he'd seen Elizabeth and Will.  

"Well, pardon me, milady," he apologized, only a little facetious as he again spread his arms wide.  More's the fool me, he thought, watching her chin lift proudly.  Aye, now, he thought, barely restraining a nod of approval, there's a girl.  "When I'm wrong, I'm wrong, and 'tis often I'm wrong."  He looked at her more closely and wondered why he'd grabbed her in the first place.  Even if she had been available, there was a dusting of freckles across her nose that spoke of no rouge or powder, she was a bit thinner than the women he kept time with, and her hair… well, her hair was shorter than his was, by his estimation.

"I'll not pardon one such as yourself," Amelia said, turning her back on him and walking down the street.  It was too late to find Philip.  Her wastrel brother would have spent the money he'd stolen from her ten times over by now.  If she'd not been waylaid by the pirate, who was undoubtedly just as much a thief as Philip, she'd have been able to salvage at least a fraction of her pay.  

"Miss!"  The voice echoed off the damp walls of the buildings, careening down the cobbled street after her.  A few drunkards stood against the walls of the inn and cackled echoing 'Miss'es after her.  

Against her better judgment, as this whole night had been, she turned and looked back at the man standing in the middle of the street.  He flicked his right hand, the rings on it flashing quickly in the moonlight, and she heard the object coming at her before she saw it.  She caught the pouch deftly, gasping at the weight of it in her fingers.  Shocked, she looked down at the money-filled sac.  "Sir, I cannot—" she looked up, meaning to face the assailant-turned-benefactor, and swallowed the rest of her sentence.

The street where he had stood was empty.


	2. Brotherly love

            She'd asked if he was mad, and he was starting to think it was a possibility.

            He'd never before bothered with being noble.  If he'd come upon the pretty lass of a laundress months before, he'd have pinched her bottom and offered her an eventful tour of the docks.  But he'd known poverty in his life, had worn clothes too small and eaten food well past good.  He knew where she was coming from, though he'd tried hard to forget it.  He leapt the planks and onto the ship in a few bounds, pacing the deck like a cat on the prowl.  

            "I could go back," he said aloud, nodding as though it were perfectly reasonable to converse with one's self.  The ship was as empty, and as quiet as a tomb, every crew member undoubtedly taking their leave as he himself had intended to.  Though he was loathe to admit it, Jack never quite trusted being on the Pearl by himself these days.  Recalling masses of moving skeletons crawling across the deck and acutely feeling his own bones under his skin, Jack shuddered.  

            Tired of his own company and craving a woman as he craved the sea, he made up his mind to snag a bit more coin and head back out.  Perhaps this time around, he could find a woman less pitiful than he had his first time out.  

~~~

            Amelia let herself into the tiny, falling-down cottage as quietly as she could, her eyes adjusting to the gloom inside.  It took her only a moment to determine the place was empty, and she stepped fully inside, holding the pouch of coins tightly at her side.  

            There was nowhere to hide in the drafty dwelling, and nowhere to hide money.  Amelia had found that out the hard way, day after day, week after week.  Though she'd often contemplated just handing her wages over to Philip, she never did.  And she never would.  Glancing into the cracked and spotted looking glass that hung askew on the wall, Amelia shoved the pirate's gift in the bodice of her dress, pressing and pushing until it no longer left a telltale bulge.  It wasn't safe, though.  Philip had looked there before, and had been none too gentle about it.

            Knuckling a tear away from her eye, Amelia thought about the man—he'd called himself Jack—who had staggered his way in and out of her pitiful existence within a matter of minutes.  

            She'd have disliked him in any situation, she warranted.  She didn't trust men who made their lives on the water, be it legal or no.  For that matter, Amelia Hamilton didn't trust the water itself.  Her father had been a fisherman, taken away years ago by a storm, a sea monster, a giant fish, or whatever idiot fantasy her drunken mother had wanted to cook up at the time.  Her drunken stories about the seas came back to haunt her.  Taletha Hamilton had been all sheets to the wind when she herself had wandered down to the beach one night and passed out with a head full of spirits on a beach before high tide.  Her fifteen-year-old-daughter had cried for hours in her room after it had happened, not because she was grieving, but because she was ashamed of her mother, and ashamed to be relieved at her death.

            Now, nearly ten years later, the shame still lingered, now in the form of her twin brother, abusive and thieving, mistrustful and mistrusted.  "Bastard," Amelia whispered under her breath, taking heart from the curse.  

            She had nothing to stay for, nothing to live for, and until now, she'd never had the means to leave.  Fueled by the thought of the money at her breast, Amelia gathered the few things she still owned and ran out the door.  

            There was just enough time to get away, far enough away that he'd never be able to find her, never be able to lay another drunken fist on her again.  

~~~

            His spirits distinctly lifted by the renewed prospects of a companied evening, Jack sang under his breath as he re-checked every last rigging on the ship.  The ship protected itself; that much he'd figured out long ago.  No matter what the Pearl went through, it seemed to have a will of its own.  

            Satisfied that all was in order, Jack climbed back down to the dock, singing a bawdy number Anamaria was fond of crooning as she worked.  He walked slowly, weaving from side to side with the ease of long habit, the rolling gait more at home on a ship than on dry land.  Any passerby would have mistaken him for an inn-hopper, and worse, they'd mistake him for a fool.  It was any easy mistake to make, and such underestimations had saved his life more than once.

            There was someone else on the dock.  He could feel it.  

            Fingering his compass with a calloused hand, the song on Jack's lips died, the rhythm replaced by a more staccato one.  Footsteps, light and neat, trailing behind him by what sounded to be only paces.  

"Well, then," he said, his voice low and dangerous, mingled with the lapping of the ocean.  "Make yourself known.  If we're lucky, I'll have killed you in minutes and can get on with my evening."  No answer was returned to him, but the footfalls ceased.  His heart now picked up the rhythm, steady but a bit faster.  As he turned, the clouds shifted and a shaft of moonlight spilled across the deck, his eyes narrowed.  

            Not a skeletal waste of a cursed mutineer, after all, but a woman.  The laundress.  Fed up with his all-too-human display of fear and with the changes she'd already wrought in his evening, Jack crossed his arms over his chest and fingered his pistol suggestively.  

            "Love, such a fine lady knows she ought not go where she's likely to be harmed."  He spoke softly, the tone conversational.  He may well have been asking about the weather, inquiring about a relative, for all the concern in his voice.  "I think it'd be best for you to turn about and carry your arse, small thought it be, off the docks.  This is no place for the likes of you."

            He was right about that, to be certain.  Every glance she took at the water made her blood just a little cooler, her head just a little lighter.  And now, faced again by this self-proclaimed captain, she could feel her heart knocking in her throat.

            _It's your only opportunity, she told herself firmly.  __If you don't take it, you're a fool as well as doomed.  "I've a proposition for you," she said, her voice trembling._

            Jack advanced several steps, seeing her inch back nearly imperceptibly.  Color flooded in her cheeks suddenly, and he could see again why he'd bothered with her in the first place.  She had fire, and fire was a rare thing for a waterman to find.  It seemed the seas dampened fire too quickly.  "Love, in case you didn't notice, I'm not a propositionin' sort of man.  Now, you're uncomfortably close to my ship, and I be mighty particular about who comes close to her these days, savvy?"  When she stood firm, he shook his head.  "Ye're just askin' for trouble this fine evening, my dearie, wandering about all the rougher parts of town."  His curiosity peaked, he stilled his ever-running commentary. 

            If Dr. Faustus could deal with the devil, she could deal with this man.  "I did not want your money, sir," she said, keeping her eyes on his as she reached into her bodice and yanked out the pouch.  "And so I'll thank you to accept the return of it.  However, I have something to ask of you."

            "I'm trig with answers, I am, but you know, I'm awfully busy this evening, having missed out on my first attempt at finding a lass for the night, so if you'll move it along, I'd be eternally grateful, and my gratitude is a wonderful thing, have no doubt."  He turned on his heel and walked away from her with a smirk on his face, knowing she wasn't done with the matter at hand.  

            Women always followed him.

            He walked only a few steps, his mind replaying the moment where she'd tugged his pouch from between her breasts, before he was brought short by a hand grasped in the cloth of his shirt, a large, sweaty face lowered to his.    

            "What do you think you're doing, y'worthless blackguard?  Did y'take somethin' of hers?  Be it that y'did, it belongs to me."  

            Jack raised his hands, keeping his eyes wide.  The man didn't scare him, as he looked only a flagon away from a ten hours' sleep, but if he believed his prey to be frightened, he'd be much easier to deal with.  "Why, hello there.  I believe there's been a bit of a misunderstanding, see, because I am on my way into town to partake of—" Jack sniffed at the man's breath—"whatever it is you've been partaking of this evening.  I took nothing from the young lady there, and so whatever it is of yours that she has, I've not seen it.  However, I believe there was a man that went that way who may have had it."  He gestured toward town.  "He looked like a likely thief."

            With an inarticulate growl, he tossed Jack aside and advanced toward Amelia, rage in his eyes.  "You've a nerve, being away from home this late," he said, grabbing her arm and pressing his fingers into it roughly.  Though she tried to bite it back, she cried out.

            "It's a good thing," he continued, "That you have a brother to look after you."


	3. Sisterly love

            It was entirely incomprehensible to her how a man so thick as Philip could find things as well as he did.  It was though he could sniff out things: gold, liquor, weaknesses.  Most of all, he could sniff out her.  If she were more than a minute more at the laundry, he knew.  And tonight, though he'd been a quarter hour's walk away from the docks, he'd come looking for her.

            "Quite a good thing," she said coldly.  "I'll thank you to take your hand from me, brother."  She clasped the small leather bag in her hand, hoping against hope he hadn't seen it.  "I was only looking at the water and thinking of mother."  The lie fell easily from her lips, as many others like it had for years.  Amelia found no shame in lying to avoid a blackened eye or a split lip.  

            At the mention of Taletha, Philip hung his head like a wounded dog and moaned.  "Ohhh, mother," he said mournfully.  "Our poor, sainted mother."  

He seemed to ruminate on this for a few moments, and Amelia was nearly certain he was dozing on his feet.

            Jack watched the tableau in front of him, arms crossed over his chest, his long, ringed fingers stroking lovingly against his pistol and a dagger he'd recently lifted from a street brawler.  Violence shined in his black eyes, and he kept a keen ear on the conversation.  If either sibling were to have chanced a glance at him, however, it would have looked as though he were staring out to sea, swaying back and forth as though entranced.  

            Philip snapped out of his doze as though slapped and shook his twin as a terrier would shake a rat.  "Lying baggage!" he shouted as her head snapped to and fro on her neck.  "You hated mother."

            Letting out a yowl of mingled pain, frustration, and anger, Amelia raked her nails against the side of her brother's face, spitting in his eyes as soon as he let her go.  She raised the hand holding the leather sac and began to swing it by the strings.  He wanted gold from her, by God, she'd give it to him right in his stubborn, jackassed, abusive jaw.  

            Jack's eyes widened in genuine surprise as he saw what she was about to do.  Stepping forward and drawing his pistol from its leather carriage in one smooth motion, the rolling, peculiar gait gone, he rammed the solid butt of it down on the drunken ox's skull.

            He made an appreciable thump as he fell on the wooden slats they stood on.

            Jack had expected a thank-you, an effusive maiden's gratitude, a shy offering of reparations.  But instead of paying him any mind, the small woman stepped forward, catching the pouch neatly in her palm, looked down at her brother, and kicked him squarely in the ribs.  He made a moist grunting sound but stayed perfectly still.  

"You rotten, evil snake," she hissed, moving to the large hands that had harmed her so often, that had bruised and stolen and kept her chained as effectively as iron would have.  Without a second thought, she tramped a boot nearly worn to holes down on his fingers and twisted her foot.  

Jack shook his head and stepped back as he heard bones crunch.  "Well, I'll be damned, 'tis another time I find meself wrong about you.  I'd had you figured for a weepier sort, I did, but it looks to me like you just crushed his hand."  Stroking the braids that dangled from his beard, he leaned down and craned his head sideways.  "Aye, that you did."  

Brushing off his hands as though ridding himself of the business, he headed back toward town.  A woman like that was a danger, indeed, for she was not only interesting but damned frightening.  

"I've not finished speaking with you, Captain," Amelia called after him calmly, trying to swallow the mysterious bubble that seemed to have lodged itself in her chest.  Had she taken more time to think about it, she would have recognized joy and freedom in that hysterical feeling.  She hadn't felt them since she'd been old enough to know better.  

"I think it best you not walk away from me just now.  I've a deal to make with the devil, I do, and I'd prefer to get it done.  If it should be my request is not enough to keep you, then you'd do well to remember I have a bit of your money here that I'm yearning to return."

Do well to remember that?  Jack thought he'd do well to remember that the woman, small enough for him to pick up and carry away without exerting himself, had just broken her brother's bones without flinching.  

"You know," he said, turning on his heel and staying in that position, one heel extended, "Though I realize I'm not acquainted with everyone's customs, it's customary for someone who is given a gift to keep it, maybe even say thank you, but to give it back is, customarily, offensive."  

"Hard to believe a fellow like you could find room for offense," Amelia said, slapping the bag into his hand, pleased when he curled his fingers around it.  "But I'll not be taking pity from a man whose gold is surely stolen and whose manners merely borrowed."

"They're real enough when I want them to be," he said clearly, straightening his posture and looking down at her.  For that fleeting moment, the pretenses were dropped, then the mask was back.  

"You've a deal to make with me, you'd best start by giving me your name and then getting it on with fast, as you've eaten up a great deal of my night already, and I'm looking for that brute brother of yours to wake up any second now, bellowing for my blood, or yours, or both, since we've both done him a considerable amount of damage.  I'd like to be on my way, drinking with a beautiful woman, before any of that happens, and not even God himself could stop me from that."  He looked up at the sky and smirked.  "Well, on second thought, perhaps He could."

Brushing a hand over her hair, which had fallen mostly free of its pins when Philip had tossed her about, Amelia took a deep breath and began.  "My name is Amelia Hamilton, and I've only one thing to ask of you.  After I ask, you may be on your way."  He nodded for her to continue.  "I beg passage of you, to wherever you may light next."

If she'd asked for a winged pig, he'd have been less shocked.  "Passage?  It isn't a charter I'm sailing.  That's my life you're wanting passage on, my blood and my sweat and my freedom."  

When he saw his words weren't affecting her, he stepped toe-to-toe with her, close enough to count the freckles on her nose, to feel the breath from her lips.  With feline grace and speed, he raised a hand and tangled it in her hair, levering her head back to expose her throat.  

"I'm a pirate, Miss Hamilton."  Speaking in a low growl, he lowered his head, bringing his lips close to the fluttering pulse in her throat.  He looked up at her through thick black lashes, appreciating how still she was, no shudders, no struggling.  No reaction at all.  "A woman on a pirate ship doesn't ride like a queen."  Wishing to shock her, he looked contemplative.  "Though she would, in fact, ride quite a bit."

Amelia let out a stuttering breath as her whole body flushed; she wasn't ashamed, as she ought to be, or embarrassed, as she'd have expected, but it was something else… the muscles in her thighs went lax and she felt her knees knock into one another.  His eyes stayed on hers, and she could smell the sweat of him, saline and elemental like the ocean around them. 

Keeping her voice level and her honey-brown eyes on his, she spoke quietly, her brain at waged battle with her baser urges.  "So that's what you and your rebel angels do, then?  That's what it's like for the dishonorable men."

"Rebel angels?"  She'd thrown him off-balance, a feat not easily accomplished.  Moreover, for a moment, the barest moment, he'd forgotten his surroundings and breathed in the scent of her.  Alarmed, he removed his hand from her hair as though burned and stepped away.

She stayed where she was, half-risen to her toes, chin tilted in the air, long pale column of throat exposed, and she spoke in a soft, steady voice.  "'His pride had cast him out from Heav'n, with all his host of rebel angels.'  That's you to a tee, isn't it?  Milton writing about you."  She blinked once, twice, then stepped back, bringing her eyes to a level position and pressing cool hands to warm cheeks.  

There was something unnerving about a man who made the brain conjure up nothing but comparisons to the devil.

Only a fool would be tempted by the tempter himself.

Her reverie was broken by the gurgling, long groan Philip sent up.  His considerable bulk shifted a bit, and Amelia brought wide, panicked brown eyes to Jack's unreadable dark ones.  Gathering her skirts around her and rising to her toes, she directed her words at Jack in a fevered whisper.

"Should I remain here, he will kill me.  If I am not miles away from him, I will die.  Have you any conscience, that will weigh on it.  Though I run now, I will be back."  She dared a glance at the stirring form of her brother, and then was gone.

Jack Sparrow, still both singing and stinging from being compared to the fallen angel, had never been quite so amused and confused in his life.  Turning his attention to the groaning man at his feet, he sighed.  He wanted nothing more than to draw his pistol and put the ogre out of everyone else's misery, but he didn't have it in him.  He'd only just steered clear of the watchful eye of Briton law.  Murdering a man wasn't likely to add to his prestige.  

With a wistful sigh, Jack booted the man in the side of the head, sending him back into the unconsciousness from which he came.  

His fingers slipping over the smooth leather of the pouch he'd been handed back, Jack inhaled the lingering scent of her.  He was afraid his night had been ruined, after all.


	4. Rum money

            He ended up going into town anyway, though his craving for the nightlife was severely diminished.  He wandered from inn to inn, only to spread the word among his men.  The Pearl would pull out in the morning, in search of more rich fools to steal from.  They'd had enough time in friendly port.  

            He told none of them of the real reason he wanted to leave.

            Jack hated attachments, hated expecting and being expected.  Predictability, to his way of thinking, was a great deal like dying.  Dying was predictable, everyone did it.  So he planned to have his big, masted, wooden idea of freedom out of the harbor before Amelia Hamilton could come looking for him again.  He only regretted he wouldn't be able to see the surprise on her face.

            Walking back to the docks, the sun just beginning to tint the sky blue instead of black, Jack thought of the words she'd spoken.  Milton's fallen angel, she'd referred to, and only moments after claiming she was making a deal with the devil.

            Someone thought an awful lot about evil, Jack surmised with a grin.  Maybe all that fire he'd seen had been naught but a showing of hellfire, as it were.

            A woman like that would do fine enough on her own.  

            So he told himself, to ease the conscience he never thought he had.

~~~

            She was a listener.  A survivor had to be, and a survivor she was.  Though it was dangerous for her, risky, she hung about the inns and public houses, listening to the talk of the town, the pirate ship that had sailed in only that morning, its gold-laden crew tipping much and lifting more from innocents.  

            Listening, she heard what sounded very much like her guarantee to passage.  

            "The cap'n of that beaut' was in 'ere but an hour ago," the serving wench crowed to a table of half-drunk smithies.  "An' a beaut' he was, as well.  Comes in here, throwin' his arms about like one of them stage actors, orderin' this an' that for 'is men.  Then, just before he walks out that door, he orders barrels of rum to be sent up to the docks in the mornin'!  Three barrels of it!  Paid a handsome price for it, he did."

            That was all Amelia needed to hear.  Slipping away, she took back alleys south, toward the docks once again.  She would need to be ready when the barrels came.  

            Keeping to the dark, quiet corners of the town, Amelia let a piece of her mind wander.  He'd meant to scare her away, of that she was certain.  Rubbing her fingers over the tender skin of her throat, she felt a shiver run through her.  She'd heard enough bawdy speech to last her a lifetime; the men who often called on Philip were none too bashful about what they said, what they touched, and where they looked.  

            But none of them had eyes like that.  

~~~

            Jack stood at the bow of the ship, watching as the water stretched before him, listening to the squawking of the gulls onshore fade behind him.  It had always been one of his favorite sounds, the sound of receding land.  

            Gibbs sidled beside him, one hand on his flask and the other on his ever-expanding stomach.  "Ho, there, Cap'n."

            "Good day, Gibbs."  Rather than turning just his head, Jack turned his whole body and faced Gibbs, his eyes intent, but he said nothing.

            The awkward posture and focused stare didn't bother the older man a bit; he was more than used to Jack's odd behavior, and was starting to see when it was real and when it was little more than a trick.  Right now, the cap'n had other things on his mind.

            Gibbs didn't like a distracted captain.

            "It be none o' my business, Cap'n, but that doesn't save me from wondering why we're pulling out earlier than ye first said."  

            Jack tilted his head and looked ruminative.  Finally, he shook his head as though shaking off a particularly deep line of thought and clapped a hand to Gibbs's shoulder.  "Gibbs, my man, we're pulling out because I said so, and be it as I'm the one that killed the cur who took my ship in the first place, I get to make the decisions, and that be the decision I made, savvy?"  

            "Savvy," Gibbs muttered by way of an answer, surmising that Jack was in another one of his moods.  In his opinion, Jack was a fine man, though a bit crazy at times, and he talked as though he'd been fed with a fire shovel.  Tongue ran at both ends, it did, and that sort always made Gibbs nervous.  

            His flask didn't talk so much.

            Moving toward the stern of the ship, Gibbs left Jack to whatever thoughts were serving as ballast.  

            They had nearly an hour of relative quiet, Jack and his crew.  Anamaria was, unsurprisingly, fighting with one of the newer men, and that provided enough noise for seven ships, in Jack's opinion.  Though he would regret it, it would soon be time for her to move along.  'Twasn't proper for her to be there in the first place, Jack reckoned.

            "Anamaria, love, you seem a bit touchy today."  Jack slung an arm over her thin shoulders, leading her away from the man she'd only been minutes from killing with her bare hands.  Looking back over his shoulder, Jack saw the crewmen roll his eyes and wave in gratitude. 

            "Get your damned hands off me," she spat, ducking under his arm and glaring at him for good measure.  She'd made the mistake once, and only a fool repeated mistakes.   Seafaring bastard was lucky she hadn't killed him in his sleep, slit his throat like the filthy pig he was.  

            Jack was preparing to speak at her—which was precisely what he did, he never quite spoke _to_ her—when the racket arose from belowdecks.

            The shouts were jumbled at first, and then one shout rung clearly above the others as the sounds moved closer to the main deck.

            "A woman!"

~~~

            She knew she'd have been better off if she'd only stayed put for a while longer, but it was positively stifling in that barrel, she smelled to high heaven, and a corner of one of her two books was poking into her ribs like a brand.  She'd simply had to get out.  What would have been the use of escaping if she'd gone too mad to enjoy it?  

            The barrel she'd deposited herself in had a knothole knocked cleanly out toward the bottom, the rum mostly emptied.  Though she'd had to stand in several inches of rum for the better part of two hours, Amelia counted herself lucky that no one had guarded the delivered barrels closely.  

             It was hard to count herself lucky at the present moment, however.

            "It's a bloody stowaway!" the first pirate, a painfully skinny man with bloodshot blue eyes, yelled, his hand outstretched to point out her location.

            "I can explain, sir, if you'd only…"

            "A woman!" Another pirate joined the first, crossing himself fanatically.  "It's a woman on board!"

            "I can assure you, I—"  Amelia didn't get the opportunity to finish her sentence before each of her arms were grasped and she was practically dragged to the upper deck.  

            He smelled her before he saw her.

            He heard the shouts, the frantic clamoring of his men, and then he smelled rum, cloyingly sweet and mixed with something else.  "What's going on here, mates, have we a bit of a problem?  I smell my knock-me-down, and I—" He broke off as he saw her, stopped in mid-swagger.

            Her dark, thick hair had swung into her face, her hands were pinned to each side by the men holding her, but she looked Jack directly in the eye as though issuing a challenge.  

            "Well, well," he said softly, stroking his beard.  _How to play this one? _he wondered, stepping around her in a semi-circle, looking at her from all angles.  He was impressed.  Grudgingly impressed, but impressed nonetheless.  

            The Black Pearl had never had a stowaway before.

            "It's a woman," Gibbs stated unnecessarily.  "And ye know they be bad luck, Cap'n."

            Amelia rolled her eyes.  "A superstitious lot here, are we?  Bad luck's a myth, sir, though I'd not doubt for a moment such a phenomenon followed this one."  So saying, she jerked her head toward Jack.  

            "You speak as though you know me, missy," he said, his eyes lighting dangerously, warning her to speak as he spoke, or…

            Or what?  she wondered.  Another little performance of what a pirate would do? Her breath quickened against her will and her cheeks flushed.  "I—I know your sort," she said hesitantly.

            Anamaria stepped forward, envy clear in her eyes.  "Ye call this one a woman?  Look at her hair," she sneered.  "What did ye do to it, hack it off with a cutlass?"

            Jack took a step back to better watch the scene.  Anamaria, confrontational, her belligerent attitude big as life, stood with her hands on her hips, fingers ticking anticipatorily at the hilt of her sword.  Amelia's chin had shot up at the mention of her hair, and Jack saw the look in her eyes was far sharper than the weapon Anamaria wielded.  

            "I sold it to a wigmaker, though I cannot see it would be any of your concern.  After all, it's you wearing the britches of a man, and not myself."  Amelia smiled sweetly even as Anamaria lunged toward her.  

            Gibbs hauled her easily out of the way as Jack advanced once again toward the stowaway.  Standing toe-to-toe with her, he narrowed his eyes, flicking a glance around to insure his men were paying attention.  "Well, then, what is it you want from a gallery of rogues such as ourselves, mistress?"

            Amelia clenched her teeth, biting back the curses she wanted to spew at him.  Arrogant pirate, treating her as a misfit when his whole life had been out of line.  "I only wish for you to drop me off at the next place you stop.  Surely a competent band such as yourselves can manage that task for me."

            "She's mighty big to speak so," Jack said loudly, taking the one extra step that would bring their bodies flush.  "A mighty big lady indeed, to be so bold as to challenge Cap'n Jack Sparrow and his crew.  We're the bloody terror of the seas, madam, not your transport.  Unless you have something to offer me in return, I'll just throw ye overboard.  'Tis a trig bloke I am on trading."  Weaving his strong fingers into her hair as he had before, he grinned.  

            "Good," Amelia breathed, feeling the heat of his body seep through her thin shift.  Keeping her eyes directly on his, loathe to lose a challenge, she slid her hand cozily between their bodies and down, and the artificial wide-eyed innocence on his face gave way to true wide-eyed shock.  

            Murmurs and whistles ripped through the crew, and nasty laughs rose up here and there.  

            Not a one of them, least of all Jack himself, saw what she was doing.  

            In less time than it took for Jack to grow completely hard with want for the hands sliding down his body, she'd snatched his gun from his breeches and stepped back, cocking and pointing it directly between those enticer's eyes.


	5. Moneyless trade

**Author's note: I just wanted to apologize for the rampant misnaming of Gibbs in the original post of chapter four; the colossal gaffe was made possible courtesy of MS Word AutoCorrect.  With the name "Briggs" appearing often in my address database, a little bit of love from Microsoft, and my own inattention upon posting, what you have is a wrongly christened crewman.  Thanks to those who pointed it out.**

            "Mother o' God," one of the crew whispered, the quiet oath carrying easily through the now-hushed congregation.  

            "Oh, no," Jack said, holding his hands up on either side of his head, a wicked smile slowly replacing the shock.  "That she's not, my lad."  

            "Passage," Amelia said, repeating the demand she'd originally given Jack.  "Away from my own personal hell, if you will."

            "I have to say, love, being on my own ship with a gun pointed at me brain might very well be _my _own personal hell," Jack said, the merriment in his tone making light of his words.

            "You're too far away from land to take me back, and you'd surely not dump an innocent woman overboard."  Amelia's hand was steady, but her voice was starting to shake just a bit.  There wasn't a friendly eye among the crew, and there wasn't a doubt in her mind they would, indeed, walk an innocent straightaway off the plank.  

            Jack shook his head and dropped his hands, clucking his tongue softly.  "What a shame, what a shame," he said loudly, turning a bit from side to side and looking at each member of his crew.  Pinning her again with those dark eyes, he took a step toward her.  "Such a spirited lass, but… your gun there is not loaded."  He shook his head sorrowfully.  "As a beautiful and… spirited… dancer once told me—show's over, love."

            Amelia's arm started to waver, then to drop, but only for a moment.  She stiffened her elbow and re-centered her aim.  "If you think for a moment I'd believe you would carry an unloaded gun, then your head is as empty as you claim this gun to be."  

            Jack's eyes went wide again and he cursed inwardly.  There was no winning with this woman.  She'd fight until she was dead, he warranted, and then probably fight some more.  Taking stock of the situation, he slid one foot forward, keeping his eyes on hers, trapping her with his gaze.  He knew she wouldn't look away as long as he kept eye contact.  

            It was over as quickly as it had begun.  His leg swept in a wide arc, catching one of her small boots with his own and bringing her down hard on the deck, her breath leaving her in a sudden gust.  Jack plucked his gun from her fingers and, with a single motion, had her scooped up and slung over his shoulder.

            "All right, men," he said loudly, cinching his arm tighter around her legs when she started to squirm.  "It's off to my cabin to… negotiate that trade I referred to earlier."  Listening to the whistles and suggestions around him, he leered.  "And take note, Captain Jack Sparrow definitely isn't a man to interrupt during negotiations, lest you have someone… pardon me, some_thing_… to add to the table."  Whistling under his breath, he headed toward his cabin. 

            Once out of earshot of the gathered crew, Jack began to curse, first quietly, and then with increasing volume.    

            "Make ye no mistake, missy," he said through clenched teeth, his anger rising as it rarely did, "'Tis lucky y'are that I've not killed ye already and made my own life easier by a good sight."

            Amelia twisted against him, feeling the cords of his arms bunch just a little tighter at her struggles.  "'Tis lucky you are I didn't just rid the seas of a nuisance such as yourself."

            Jack stopped just outside his cabin and made the mistake of inhaling deeply.  She smelled to high heaven like rum, and for the first time in his life he regretted how much he truly loved that smell.  The smell of her was making him thirsty, and for more than just the rum.  With an annoyed growl, he dumped her inside the cabin.

            "Though it pains me greatly to say so," he said, wincing and pacing in front of her, "I must finally admit that Gibbs is right.  Women are indeed bad luck."  He held up a finger, stopping momentarily to glare at her.  "But not only on ships.  Oh, no.  Women are bad luck in general, I've found, for nothing satisfies them and nothing stops them.  You stay, they slap you like great bullying heifers, calling you lazy and worthless.  You leave, they bloody find you and slap you like great bullying heifers, calling you a cad and a cur.  You leave them about their own business and they hold a bloody gun to your bloody face while bloody emasculating you in front of your whole… bloody… crew." He stopped now, his hands held out, frozen in mid-shrug.  "I don't know what the hell a man is supposed to do."

            "Emasculating?" Amelia repeated.  "That's a terribly big word for one such as yourself."

            "I don't like to listen to you," Jack said decisively.  "I've quite decided that, thank you."

            "It's just like a man," Amelia continued, ignoring him more effectively than anyone ever did, "To blame it on a woman."

            "'Twas a woman that started it all in the first place!" Jack said, suddenly pleased that he'd be able to best her in this particular argument.  "You know, I'm not a particularly religious bloke, love, but I do know a woman definitely started the whole trouble.  Why, just think, had it not been for milady Eve, I might have been an angelic sort."

            "You'd not have been angelic in any circumstance," she spat back, standing.  She'd not for one second argue if he was looking down on her.  "And you know, though 'twas a woman who took the first bite, it's not a bit shocking 'twas a man who was fool enough to eat something without knowing what in heaven's name he was putting in his mouth."

            The gleam returned to his eyes, the one she'd started to anticipate and dread simultaneously.  

            "Oh, no, love, that'd never be me," he said slowly, reaching for her.  She ducked back, her shoulder barely missing his grasp.  "I always know what it is I'm putting in my mouth."

            She considered a particularly unladylike suggestion about what, precisely, he could put in his mouth, then thought it better to stay silent on that specific matter.  "Surely," she said sweetly, trying to fall back on reason, "It can't hurt you a bit to just keep me until next stop.  I'll be quiet as a mouse, and 'tisn't as though I eat much—"

            "You already cost me a barrel of rum, love, and that's more than anyone else has ever gotten away with.  I said it before, 'tis lucky y'are I've not killed you… yet."  Truth be told, he was starting to want to wrap his hands around that pretty white throat and squeeze.  

            "Thought it may come as a shock to you, Captain, I've as much fright of you as I have for the moon in the sky."  

            Apt, he thought, for there were times when the moonlight scared even him.  He said nothing, though, as she crossed the space back to him.

            Amelia stood in front of him, face uptilted to his.  "Look," she commanded, jerking back the too-tight sleeve of her dress, splitting a seam as she did so.  "And see why nothing you've to say scares me."

            A long, puckered scar ran the length of her arm, laddering its way up the inside of her wrist and disappearing under the cloth that still laid at the crook of her elbow.  

            "I've seen enough knife scars to recognize one," he said honestly, turning his back to her.  It made him sick to see such a thing, and sicker still to know it bothered him.  "You really ought to stay out of those drunken brawls and the like."

            "'Tisn't from a brawl, and well it is you know it."  Suddenly weary, Amelia sat down again.  "That one was for trying to snatch my wages back from him.  He's stupid, and he's big, but he's quick when he's being mean."

            There was no winning against such a woman.  

            "I wasn't lying when I said I wanted a trade," he finally said.  

            Amelia tensed at his words, her eyes suddenly hooded.  No matter what the sinister attraction, she wasn't a common strumpet, and she wouldn't be.  Not even to get away from Philip. 

            "I'd sooner swim in the wake of this monstrosity than do what you're suggesting," she said icily, turning her face away.

            He laughed then, glad to see something had unnerved her.  It seemed to take much to do so.  "Then I suppose it's a good thing, indeed, that I wasn't suggesting what you're suggesting I'm suggesting."  Clasping his hands behind his back, he rocked back on his heels.  "But bein' as I'm a demanding sort, and you're limiting what I can and cannot demand, I've several demands to make of you."

            "Surely you don't think that surprises me."  She tried to keep her dignity about her, but it was relief Amelia felt most clearly.  

            "You're my laundress now, Miss Hamilton."  Jack glanced down at his shirt, plucking a bit of it away from his skin theatrically.  "It's amazing how filthy a man can get."

            "Not when said man is filthy throughout," she retorted, then immediately regretted it.  She was completely unable to stop the running of her mouth around the man.  The more he talked, the more she wished to put him in his place… now, if only she could discern what sort of a place that would be.  

            She knew she was being disagreeable; she caught herself wincing after nearly every hateful thing she said to him.  But Taletha Hamilton's daughter, by sheer chance, was no fool.  Amelia knew there would be no greater crime of foolishness than to get close to this man.  She'd rather be a shrew than be burned for touching that which should be untouchable.  

            Smirking, Jack recalled a stage show he'd seen recently, an amateur group of thespians spouting the words of an Englishman.  A bloody tale, it had been, just to Jack's liking.  He later found the written version had been much, much better.  "'The lady doth protest too much, methinks.'" 

            Amelia merely sat where she was, gaping for a few moments.  "You—Shakespeare?"  She couldn't form a complete sentence even on threat of death.

            "Are we a snob, then, Miss Hamilton?  A blue-stocking snob, eh?"  Judging by the burning riot of color on her cheeks, she was, indeed, a bit of a snob.  Ashamed to have the fact pointed out.  Filing away that particular fact for future reference, he continued on as though he hadn't stopped.  "Since you seem to believe so strongly in education—God save the King's English and all that rot—you can teach a member of my crew to read."

            She gasped; she couldn't help it.  The idea of teaching a black-toothed, branded ruffian how to read—well, it seemed nigh to impossible, not to mention undesirable.

            Nothing her hesitation, he flapped a hand in dismissal.  "Unless, of course, you think it beyond your capabilities, in which case I can just perish the thought and double your load of soiled wash, which is a possibility, and now that I think of it, has its merits.  You know, forget the reading and I'll—"

            "I'll do it," she said, her voice low and certain.  "Once I've completed that task, I'll thank you to remember you doubted me.  Perhaps it would do a bit for your humility."  She'd be damned if he would underestimate her.  He'd done it far too often already.

            Biting the insides of his already hollowed cheeks to keep from grinning, Jack nodded soberly.  His hubris hadn't been nearly as prominently displayed as hers was.  Leaning down, bracing a hand on either side of her, he looked into her eyes, then let his gaze travel to her lips.  

            "One more thing, Amelia."  He shifted and nearly groaned when he saw her bosom rise and fall with the acceleration of her breathing.  Flicking his eyes back up to hers, he licked his lips and smiled saucily.  "You'll have to get out of that dress."


	6. Literature lovers

            Amelia drew in one breath, then exhaled shakily through her nose.  At a lack for a witty rejoinder, she tried to keep her focus away from those eerily changeable eyes of his, but save for gazing at his mouth, there was nowhere else to look.  So thinking, she closed her eyes.  "I've already stated my position on this matter," she said quietly, trying to quiet the small trill of mistrust that went through her.  To close your eyes around such a man could surely not be considered safe.  

            She felt him push away from her, felt the heat radiating off him recede, and a chuckle permeated the resulting silence, first quiet, then growing into raucously loud laughter.  When she finally opened her eyes, she saw him standing in the center of the small room, hands on hips, head thrown back in laughter.  The gold caps on his teeth winked in the light of the oil lamp 

            "Your position?  Aye," he said, placing his hands behind his back and pacing like a man prepared to give a speech.  "I'd say that's the right phrase to use, love, since I'd be putting you through all sorts of positions, if that was what I had in mind."  Stopping in front of her, his gaze grew faraway.  He stayed like that for several moments, then snapped back instantly.  "But it isn't.  I was speakin' of goin' down to the hold, and findin' a garment that doesn't make you look so common, savvy?" 

            He executed a quick, mocking bow and walked out, leaving her alone to wonder why, exactly, she hadn't used the gun when she'd had the chance.

~~~

            She had thought things couldn't get any worse, but Amelia discovered the only good thing that had happened upon boarding the Black Pearl was the dress.  

            Her strides unhampered by the roomy folds of rich bronze-colored fabric, Amelia paced the length of the upper deck, talking to herself loudly.  It had been only moments since he'd given her the particulars of his request for her, and her anger was still fresh.  It was one thing to try and teach one of the crewman to read; it was quite another that it wasn't a crewman at all, but the token crew-woman.

            "I won't do it.  It is positively idiotic, and what's more, will be of no practical use.  Do you hear me?  No practical use!"  Stopping, she turned to direct the shout at Jack, who was standing at the wheel of the ship, the wind blowing his beaded strands of hair back from his face.  It was hard to yell at a man who looked as truly happy as he did—a genuine happiness, the only expression she'd seen from him that was completely lacking artifice.  

            She suspected, though, that the yelling only made him happier.  

            "It's upsetting the crew, ye are, with yer shoutin' and carryin' on.  Though ye look a mite finer than ye did when we dragged your carcass above decks, ye still talk like a high-nosed bitch."  Anamaria stood, arms crossed, behind Amelia.  "Besides, ye're stuck wit' me whether you want it or not."

            "A high-nosed bitch, is it?"  Amelia turned and tried her best to look down her nose at the dark-skinned piratess.  "'Tis a bit hypocritical of you to call me so, is it not?"  When the woman didn't answer her, Amelia sighed.  She'd naught to do on the ship but shout, anyway.  She'd do better to occupy her time, but what angered her was that she knew Jack had counted on her thinking so.  He was a canny bastard, and seemed to be three steps ahead of everyone else.

            She'd remedy that in time, but she would deal with things in their proper order. 

            "I believe we've gotten off to a start not conducive to a learning situation," she said, swallowing her pride in one bitter gulp.  "Jack wants you to read, and so you shall."

            "Don't ye mean _Captain _Jack?"  Anamaria crossed her arms and looked archly at the only other female on the ship.  She was amused but also troubled by the missy's familiarity with the captain.  It spoke of things Anamaria knew well of Jack.  She wondered if, when Jack was done with her, the woman wouldn't just kill him rather than slapping him.

            That was, in her opinion, a more likely course of action for such a high-nosed bitch.  

              "Yes, yes, Captain," Amelia said absently, her gaze drawn back to the man in question.  His eyes burned with the coming sundown, and she wondered what it was like to crave something as powerfully as he seemed to crave the sea.

            "Well, then," Anamaria said, following the laundress's gaze and rolling her eyes.  "What the Cap'n wants, the Cap'n gets." 

            "Then it's best we give it to him," Amelia said, her cheeks burning once again.  "Let's take it below deck, shall we?"

            She didn't have a clue where to begin.  Amelia was largely self-taught, her father gone too much to help, her mother and brother both too low for such a pastime as reading.  As a little girl, she'd shamelessly asked help here and there, of merchants, of the laundry women.  Even, she recalled, from several of the prostitutes, women whom the child Amelia had called "rouge-ladies."  

            It didn't help matters that the only books she had, the only possessions she'd been able to keep, were far too advanced for a beginning reader.  Marlowe's _Dr. Faustus _and a collection of poetry from John Donne hardly seemed appropriate.  But she would make do.  

            "'Go and catch a falling star,'" Amelia read slowly aloud, following each word with her finger.  Though Anamaria was stoic at best, she could see the young woman's interest.  "Do you like it?"

            Grudgingly, Anamaria first shrugged, then nodded.  "It sounds fine," she said.  "Like something the Cap'n says when he's rambling on."

            That surprised a laugh out of Amelia.  "All right," she said.  "Then we'll start with that line and see what we can do."

            Jack stood outside the largest of the three wardrooms and listened to the two women poring over the poetry.  Under his breath, he recited the rest of the stanza that Amelia had started to read aloud. 

_Go and catch a falling star,_

_Get with child a mandrake root,  
Tell me, where all past years are,  
Or who cleft the Devil's foot,  
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,  
Or to keep off envy's stinging,  
And find  
What wind  
Serves to advance an honest mind._

            With a rueful grin, remembering things long past, he turned away and went back to the quarterdeck.

~~~  
            Amelia hugged her books to her chest, a smile slipping over her full lips.  It had actually gone much better than she'd anticipated; Anamaria knew her alphabet fairly well, she only needed to know how it all fit together.  

            "Miss, the captain wishes to see you in his quarters."  Gibbs appeared at her elbow like a portly, grizzled valet, his fingers playing nervously over his ever-present flask.  "Immediately."

            The summons was enough to slap the smile straightaway from her face, Briggs noticed.  She _was _a pretty slip of a thing, even if she were leagues away from the captain's usual type.  He noted now, at his message, the flush drained out of her cheeks, leaving her freckles standing out sharply.  

            _Who'd've ever seen the Cap'n takin' up with a missy like that?  Christened by a baker, sure as the sun sets west, and blue-stockinged to boot, Gibbs thought, shaking his head as the woman marched up to the door of the captain's cabin._

              She knocked on the solid wooden door, turning her back to it as she waited.  It was indecent for him to call for her this late in the evening.  It was nearly full night.  Inhaling the scent of the ocean, she pressed a hand to her uneasy stomach and thought of her parents, each sucked away by the waters that ruled the earth.

            It was unnerving, to say the least.

            Jack stood, braced against the sturdy wood of the doorframe, and wondered how long it would be before she realized she was standing with her back to an open door.  Her hair was now swept up in the best braid she could manage, stray locks teased out here and there by the wind.  The dress she'd chosen looked nearly baggy on her compared to the too-tight cotton she'd worn earlier, and made her seem frailer, smaller.  Not for the first time in the last day, Jack wondered why on earth such a creature was on the Pearl.

            "I would inquire as to what was on your mind, love, but as I'm a selfish sort, I won't."  He was inordinately pleased by the way she jumped guiltily, turning to face him a flush high on her cheeks.  "What do you think of it?" he asked, gesturing widely with his left hand at the ship, its endlessly tall masts, the complicated riggings.  Keeping his hand aloft, he blinked owlishly and looked at her expectantly.  

            "It's…"  What could she say?  Terrifying?  That was certainly the truth.  Foreboding?  Also the truth.  Settling for diplomacy, she finished her sentence.  "Interesting."

            Reading the meaning in the hesitation, Jack laughed.  "Come in.  I'll not speak with you in the open, as it affords little privacy.  Privacy is precious, it is, and it's scarce to be found on a ship.  I'd sail by my onesies, but—"

            She couldn't bear to hear out the rest of the rambling declaration.  "By your _what?_"  

            He rolled his eyes dramatically, stepping inside the cabin and sweeping his arm in an arc.  "Ladies first, Miss Hamilton."

            She gasped in mingled shock and breathlessness as she entered the cabin.  Soiled laundry littered the floor, the smell of it strong and uniquely male.  Feeling swamped, she thought frantically that it was all definitely his laundry; it smelled precisely like him. 

            "Oh, dear heavens," she said.  Turning to him, hand pressed to her chest, she meant to question him, to ask if he actually expected her to do all that laundry at once, and felt breathless all over again.

            The cad was taking his bloody shirt off as she stood right there.

            "What in the name of all that is holy do you think you are doing?" she asked, slapping at his arms unthinkingly, trying to get him to lower them from the action he was performing.  All she succeeded in doing was making him undress slower.  She closed her eyes and turned her back, wondering what she'd done in life to deserve such torture.  

            She'd caught only a glimpse of a long, lean torso, sinfully tanned and with a thin black line of hair snaking downward.  That was as far as she'd looked before cursing at him and herself loudly and turning away.  

            Delighted, Jack sat in the single chair perched in the middle of the mess of laundry and crossed his legs.  "I, love, am giving you laundry to do."


	7. Books and money

            She tried to hold back, she really did.  But for all her education, Amelia had grown up in a house of drunkenness, of impropriety left and right.  

            She couldn't hold her tongue.  

            "You," she said, keeping her back to him, her hands clenched so tightly at her sides that her fingernails cut crescents into her palms, "Are a bloody cur of a dog.  The filthy clothes suit ye, ye mannerless horse's ass."  As she spoke, the low-class accent she worked so hard to banish from her voice thickened.  "I'd not do laundry for the likes of ye even if it meant drowning in the sea.  Calling a girl in here like a servant only to undress yerself in front of her, aye?  Well, then ye can finish undressing with yer door open."  

            Now she just had to figure out how to get past him without looking at him.  She didn't know what the problem was, precisely.  She'd read much of Cowper's _Anatomy, and had certainly looked at all the pictures.  And what a strapping she'd gotten for that from her da when he'd found out.  But it had been interesting.  _

            He was different than a drawing, in more ways than one.  Seeing her sod of a brother passed out shirtless on the floor of the shack had been a common occurrence.  But Jack… 

            _Best not to dwell on that too long, missy, she commanded herself, heading blindly for the door.  She'd acted like a fool, she was afraid, overreacted like a crazed hysteric and shown herself for the naïve idiot she was.  Who had any modesty on a pirate ship, anyway?_

            She'd nearly made it to the door, very nearly, when long, strong fingers banded around her wrist and jerked her to a stop.  "Oh come, now, love," he spoke gently, trying to calm her.  He'd only been trying to get a rise out of her, not by undressing but by giving her one more piece of work to add to all the others he'd given her.  And he hadn't thought she'd be so offended.

            _Face it mate, you know a whole lot of nothing about innocents, having never been one, and not having met one in a great long while, he thought, feeling the small bones of her wrist beneath his fingers.  Her pulse was kicking like a horse, he noted.  _

            "Well, love, you're a first for me," he said sincerely, trying to decide whether to keep his grip on her wrist or to let go and put his shirt back on.  "'Tis the only time a woman has complained about the sight of my skin, as it were."  

            She turned then, her dark eyes cooler than the breeze from the waters.  Trying to will her hand not to tremble in his, she let her gaze drop deliberately, dispassionately, over his bare chest and stomach, keeping her nose in the air.  _Compare it to the book, _she told herself firmly.  But the drawings had been neither exceptionally well-muscled nor tanned nor tattooed.  He was, in a scientific way, fascinating.  

            Science had nothing to do with the color creeping up her neck and to her cheeks.

            Tilting his head and looking smug, Jack stood.  Though he saw her draw in a quick breath, he admired that she stood her ground.  "I see the complaints have—" Fluttering his fingers in the air, the smugness slipped into a roguish grin.  "Vanished."

            "Behind a rapidly thinning veil of manners," she said, biting her tongue to keep herself from the panicked whimper that wanted to escape her lips.  He was inching closer to her, blast it all, and the man was generating heat like a wood stove.  "If it be to your satisfaction, Captain, I believe I'll do your laundry tomorrow rather than falling asleep in a tub full of suds and soiled shirts."

            He'd forgotten.  So accustomed was he to running only on the barest amount of sleep, he hadn't given a single thought to where she would rest.  He could see now, however, the dark smudges nestled under her eyes.  Whirling away from her suddenly, he began to pluck through the piles of clothing on the floor, tossing things this way and that.  Occasionally he would mutter to himself, tug at the braids of his beard, and start rooting in a different place.

            Finally he crowed triumphantly, a wild sound that made Amelia's eyes grow wide.  She was afraid to ask what he was looking for, or moreover, what he had found.  

            "A cot," he said, flourishing his hands at the long feather cot that stood inches off the floor.  "I'd offer ye my bed," he said confidentially, "But I've a feeling you'd slap me."  Rubbing his cheek as though remembering slaps long past, he narrowed his eyes.  "I seem to attract that sort of thing."

            "And I seem not to be the least bit shocked at that," she said, her eyes round.  Sleep in his cabin, with his bed only inches away?  "Are you quite certain that's a wise idea?"  She tried to shape her phrases carefully, as not to either irk or titillate him.  It seemed to take precious little to do either.  

            "Do I look like a wise man to you?" he asked, drawing a strand of beads through his fingers and looking at it contemplatively.  

            Amelia rubbed her temples with her fingers, letting her eyes drift shut.  Anything to be relieved of the sight of him.  "I'll not answer that question."  

            "I'll say, then, you're a smarter girl than you look.  I suppose you could stay somewhere else on the ship," he said, picking his way with small, affected steps through the piles of clothes on the floor.  "I'm sure none of the men on this ship, pirates though they be, rogues and thieves and murderers, branded as such, each and every one, would ever dream of laying a finger on you."  Laying a hand on his chest, he looked at her soberly.  "Gentlemen at heart, we pirates."

            Amelia was starting to think that staying in the rum barrel for the entirety of the trip wouldn't have been such a bad idea after all.  "Then why does Anamaria get to sleep among them?" she said, hating the petulant note in her voice.  She was being childish and stubborn, inconveniencing him more by the minute.

            _How do you inconvenience a pirate?  The thought eased through her mind.  _They don't have rules, they're basically ignorant, and they do what they please on the smallest of whims.  _But even as she thought it, she knew it wasn't true._

            Jack laughed, pleasant this time rather than mocking.  How long had it been since he'd had an intelligent conversation?  Most of the discussing that got done aboard the Pearl consisted of drunken, malformed soliloquies.  "Because, love, Anamaria can take care of herself, while you can't even hold onto my weapon once you've grasped it."  Smiling broadly at his double entendre, he watched her cheeks grow even redder. 

            It had nearly made his eyes cross when she'd slithered that small hand down the length of his body, but sadistically, it had been more arousing when she'd swept his own gun into his face.  Fire on the high seas.  It had been a day, a long one for her, and that blaze was showing no signs of abating.

            After freedom, Jack loved nothing more than being entertained.  

            Amelia knew when she'd been beaten, fair or no.  And with her head aching like a rotted tooth and her eyes threatening at every moment to drop shut, she was too weary to argue.  Even after a full day of laundering and a rousing fight with Philip, she'd never felt so exhausted.  Stepping on the mounds of clothes rather than bothering to walk around them, she laid down on the cot and turned her back to his bed.  

            "That seems to be settled, then, as you yourself seem settled," Jack said, looking down at her for a few moments.  "I didn't even get slapped in the process, which is quite amazing in and of itself.  I must say that's the first time I may have deserved it, but didn't actually get it.  Though I did deserve it after stealing Anamaria's ship… but it was too nice a ship for a lass, anyway."  He stilled with a grin as Amelia rolled over and fixed him with a stare.

            "If you'll not stop the chattering, the slap may be forthcoming."  Not as though she'd be able to sleep, anyway, with every inch of her body tense and humming like lightning.  When he made a big show of shutting his lips, she turned her back again and closed her eyes.

            He wanted to ask if she was actually going to sleep in the gown, but thought of what she'd been wearing and let it pass.  Someone could find her a more appropriate garment in the hold tomorrow.  Sitting up in the bed, Jack lowered all the lamps but one and drew out the one thing he had left from his life before piracy.

            Just before she drifted off, Amelia was sure she heard pages turning.  

~~~

            "He was shorter than I," the man growled, lowering his face to the innkeeper's.  "Hair like a woman's, he had, prettied up with trinkets and bits of glass.  Talked fancy, but fast."

            One of the women sitting on the stairs, her large breasts all but spilling out of her low-cut dress, fanned herself and spoke up.  "What if we did know who yer talkin' about?"

            Philip huffed out a breath, holding his right hand close to his chest.  He wanted to threaten, to hit, to make the worthless whore tell him something of use.  It was hard to do when his hand had been turned to a worthless mash of mush.  The stench rising from the mangled hand was nearly unbearable, and the only treatment Philip had given it was a splash of homemade rye-brew.  "Then ye'd tell me, pintle-merchant."  He flipped a coin to her, laughing nastily as she scrambled after it on the stairs.  

            "Aye," she said breathlessly, testing the coin with her tooth.  "'E's Cap'n Jack Sparrow.  Surely ye've heard of 'im?  'Scaped the Brit soldiers not too long ago.  It'd take a brainier fella than ye to find 'im, I warrant."

            "Warrant all ye like, ye bacon-fed baggage."  Philip crossed the room to her, leering like a madman the whole time.  But she was stupid and greedy, so she pushed herself up, shoving her breasts into his face by way of invitation.  Without so much as breaking stride, he backhanded her with his left hand, dug his coin and others from between her breasts, and left the inn a happy man.

            Nobody took what was his until he was finished with it, and he wasn't near finished with his whore of a sister.  


	8. Labors of love?

            Angry eyes, bloodshot and red-rimmed, mouth moving in a soundless shout, words without volume.  A large hand, wavering in the air before coming down on her own small hand, large fist grinding small fingers together.  A snap, loud and sickening, so painful it put colors behind her closed eyelids.

            How many broken bones did that make?  She didn't know, had stopped counting as a small, bullied child.  He grabbed her by the hair, jerking her head to one side—

            And Amelia woke up gasping, both hands tensely poised in claws, the tendons in her hands standing out clearly.  Slowly relaxing her hands, she sat up and shoved them through her messy hair.  She was alone in the cabin, surrounded by things that smelled of him.  She knew, after spending the night among all those shirts, she too would smell like him.

            Letting out a shaky breath, she wished she could write her dream off as a nightmare.  But it was a memory, one of thousands like it.  The week he'd broken her finger, she'd laundered with her index finger tightly bound in an old rag one of the nuns had discarded.  Though she knew it was un-Christian, she hoped the bastard was alone somewhere with his entire hand wrapped in filthy rags.  

            Fully away she would be unable to return to sleep, Amelia got out of the cot and began gathering armloads of shirts and breeches, studiously avoiding looking at any of them intently.  She divided them into several piles according to the type of clothing they were, wondering how long it had been since he'd last done laundry.

            Judging by the amount of clothing, he'd not done it at all, merely tossed it aside in favor of something else he'd either bought or stolen.  

            Only after she had divided everything did Amelia find a small tub and a cake of lye soap that had been obscured by the clothing.  Dumping a heaping armful of shirts into the tub, she wrested them out the door and onto the main deck.  

            The sun had not yet risen, and only a few crewmen were on deck, undoubtedly keeping watch.  Though their eyes were sharp and alert, their bodies drooped from weariness, and with every moment the dark lessened and highlighted the worn lines of their faces.

            Walking to the stern of the boat, Amelia set the wash down and put her hands to her hips, studying the lay of the ship until she spotted what she wanted.  Grabbing the rope-tethered pail, she tested the knots and tossed it overboard, letting the rope slide through her fingers until it hit the water far below.  Twitching the rope, she felt the pail start to take in water and smiled in satisfaction, strengthening her grip against the hard pull.

            She'd been young, just a girl, the one and only time she'd gone out to sea with her father.  She'd demanded to know everything, to be taught the knots, to know the names of the fish.  It had been one of the last wonderful days in her young life.

            It had been one of the last days of her childhood.

            With a small grunt, both to shake off the memory and to lend her strength, Amelia hauled up the bucket she'd filled with saltwater, transferring it from pail to tub.  

            "We've something in common then, as it seems you're an early riser."  He'd been watching her for several moments, surprised that she'd spoke to no one, asked for no help.  

            Unsurprised by his presence, Amelia went to her knees in front of the washtub, the sleeves of the dress pushed above her elbows.  "'Tisn't by choice.  I could not sleep."

            _Something else in common, Jack thought.  "You know, love, there's freshwater below."_

            Finally she looked up at him, blowing a lock of dark hair out of her eyes and fervently wishing he'd disappear.  It was humiliating to sit on the deck of his ship in the wee hours of the morning, dressed in finery but scrubbing his clothes like a servant.  "The salt in the water will keep them from freezing or being stiff if I'm to hang them out here."  He looked up at the sky, eyes narrowed, lips slightly parted as though he was sipping the wind.  "It'll be light in less than an hour, and this deck will be busy."

            "I'll not need an hour to finish your shirts, unless you insist on nattering at me the entire time I'm scrubbing at them."  Remembering that she was obligated to him, she sighed and added, "Sir."

            Rolling his eyes, Jack crouched down to her level.  "Oh, now that's rich, innit?  You callin' me 'sir' after threatening to kill me yesterday."  She started to speak, the anger in her eyes clear, but he held up a hand and closed his eyes.  "No, no, hush, love—I'd like to savor this moment.  It's clearly my victory when a woman who despises me calls me sir.  And she hasn't even slapped me yet, which is remarkable indeed.  No one will ever believe it."  Noting that a corner of her mouth was pulling into something dangerously close to a smile, he added, "I scarcely believe it myself."

            Biting the insides of her cheeks, Amelia returned her full attention to the shirts.  

            It was going to be a long morning.

~~~  
            "Te...tee... aa… cuh… huh."  Anamaria rolled her eyes.  "It don't take a bloody blue-stocking to know that doesn't make a word."

            Trying to roll the crick from her neck, Amelia sighed.  "Doesn't.  It _doesn't _take a blue-stocking.  And it does make a word.  Try C-H as you would in…" Amelia struggled to find something Anamaria could relate to.  Obviously "chapel" wouldn't work.  "Chart!" she said suddenly.  "C-H makes the sound at the beginning of chart."

            "Bloody ridiculous," the unwilling pupil muttered, but she reapplied her attention to the page in front of her.  "Te… tee…atch.  Teach."  

            Word by word, she struggled to read the first stanza of the poem aloud.  By the end of an hour, Amelia felt as though they'd been there for twice as long.  But the visible progress was rewarding.  

            Without a word of thanks or departure, Anamaria left the wardroom when the bell rang for the evening meal.  Sighing heavily and not feeling a bit hungry, Amelia dropped her head to the table and wished fervently the ship would dock somewhere soon.

            "Look alive, love."

            She jerked her head up, a guilty blush staining her cheeks.  She'd been near to falling asleep there in the wardroom.  One hour with Anamaria was definitely more exhausting than the three tubs of laundry she'd done throughout the day, moving her tub each time to keep away from the majority of the crew.  They never came near her, but after hearing several of them discuss exactly why Jack was keeping her aboard, she was burning with shame and barely reigning in her indignation.  Now, as she looked blearily at Jack, she knew her deal with the devil had carried a steep enough price, indeed.  He'd drive her mad or she'd die of exhaustion before they ever reached port.  With the same negligent flick of the wrist he'd used to toss his coins to her, he tossed a piece of fruit across the room.

            She caught it one-handed, her small fingers curling around it.  "'Tis a strange-looking fruit," she admitted, turning it in her fingers.  

            "Pomegranate," he said, stepping forward and pulling a dagger from his belt.  "Though the inside's the good part.  Much like a woman, aye?"  Enjoying her blush, he split the fruit open, revealing the rosy particles inside.  "No worries, love.  Eating it won't tether you to the netherworld as queen of my ship."

            Startled, her eyes flew to his.  It _had been just what she was thinking, of Persephone's fate.  "How did you know that?"_

            "Because you've a morbid fascination with evil, Miss Hamilton.  Everything with you is about the devil.  Deals with the devil, like Marlowe's tale, fallen angels as Milton's.  Or is it just that everything about me is devilish?"  Knowing he hadn't answered the question as she'd wanted, he sat down in Anamaria's vacated spot and popped a piece of the fruit into his mouth.

            She took a piece of it experimentally, turning his answer over in her mind.  What use had a pirate for Marlowe, Milton, and mythology?  "This is good," she said suddenly, looking at the pomegranate on the table.  "But wherever did you get it?"

            He shook his head, beads clicking softly.  "You wouldn't want to know, love."

            "I've a powerful curiosity," she reminded him, starting to enjoy herself.  

            Kicking his chair back on two legs and hooking a worn boot under the edge of the table, he regarded her.  "I think you have," he agreed.  "A bit frightening, it is.  Let's just say an Eastern merchant and I made a bit of a trade."

            "The fruit for…?"  She left the sentence open, waiting for him to finish it.

            Jack looked hurt and he put a hand to his chest, sighing hugely.  "You underestimate me, love.  Not the fruit.  All of his cargo in exchange for—" he paused to heighten the anticipation, leaning forward even as she did.  "His life."

            She swallowed hard, searching his face for something.  "Truly?"

            Jack weighed between his pride and his reputation with Amelia and found they were somehow, at least at the moment, intertwined.  "Well, love, 'tisn't as though I'd have actually killed him.  If I _had dropped him off the side of the ship, he'd have surely been able to swim."  _

            "Surely," she agreed, mocking his nearly-slurring accent.  "What a scoundrel you are, Jack Sparrow."  She stood up and started to grab her book.  "Thank you for the pomegranate."

            "When is it that you'll actually be done with the Donne?" he asked, thumping a knuckle on the book and making her freeze.  

            "I'm not sure," she said slowly, wanting to test him, wanting to know the depths of what he knew.  "Since Anamaria's only up to mermaids singing."

            He sighed then, his eyes losing the ever-present intensity, growing faraway.  A smile, soft and vulnerable, flitted over his mouth.  "Aye.  'Tis my favorite part of the whole bit.  I've been on these waters for many a year now, and I've still not tracked down those damned mermaids."

            Sitting back down, Amelia reached for her book, her hand brushing against his.  She left it where it was instead of jerking back, needing him to keep that moment of vulnerability, knowing that if he stayed there, she could exercise a bit more of her unlimited curiosity.  

            "Who are you?" she asked quietly.  "Or more to the point, Captain Jack Sparrow, who _were _you?"


	9. Love of a father

            He jerked his hand back, changing the quick movement to an overblown gesture only in the last moment.  "For such an intelligent lass, I would think you'd know more about sea captains.  I am who I am, just as I've been since the beginning of time and ever shall be.  I was Captain Jack Sparrow from the moment I sprung fully formed from the sea.  Interesting time, that was, nude as a—"

            Amelia shook her head slapping the book on the table and making him narrow his eyes, his voice trailing off.  

            "If you don't like to hear of it, you're welcome to go elsewhere.  You _did _ask the question, love."  But he could see the tenacity in her eyes, the part of her that, like a dog with a bone, wouldn't let go until she'd swallowed it whole or shook it to pieces.  

            "You didn't learn John Milton and John Donne on a ship, Captain, just as I did not learn them in a laundry.  It is difficult, to say the least, to find someone who not only recognizes those names but seems to know them as well as I, and so I would be sorely amiss not to press the matter."  She spoke rapidly, her eyes wide and excited.  There had been no one as she grew up to talk with her about the worlds made by others, the realities spun by words.  She'd tried talking to Philip about it once, only to garner herself a cuff across the head.        

            Jack laid his hands palm-down on the table and felt keenly the two halves of him warring.  It had been so easy, once upon a time, to forget the things she spoke of. The older he got, however, the more things he saw, the more he did, and the closer he got to that ever-elusive edge of the world, the more he thought about days long past.  

            It was something he'd spoken of to no one, save for hints here and there, occasional references to a life long past.  What good did it do, after all, for a pirate to be educated?  Even Barbossa had known enough to hide his finer side, seeing that the crew would better follow a man who more closely resembled them. 

            But farces grew tiresome.  

            And so Jack started to speak, the voice that came from his mouth a quieter version of his usual crow, the accent softer, more cultured.  

            "A time ago," he said, kicking back in his chair and looking at her closely, watching her for any reaction, "Decades, or perhaps it's actually been centuries, there was a man with small means and great dreams.  He had a pretty young wife, it's told, and the longing to teach.  And so teach he did, giving knowledge to the moneyed class for little thanks and littler wage."

            Jack shut his eyes, and let the words become images, and the images become memories.

~~~  
            "Johnny!  It's past the hour already, we need to go!"  John Sparrow stood by the door of the house, listening for his ten-year-old son.  

            "Sorry, Father."  A boy, painfully skinny as most young boys are, ran through the house, coat in hand, a book tucked under his arm.  Grinning sheepishly, he slid his arms into his coat and stood impatiently as his father tried to tame his unruly mop of dark hair.

            John grasped his son's face in his hands, kneeling down to look at the boy who looked so much like Mariel.  It was painful, John thought, but in a bittersweet way.  She'd died giving birth to her son, the very image of her.  "Well," he said loftily, tugging at each of his son's ears, "I suppose you'll have to do.  Too late to trade you in now, you know."

            Laughing, Johnny followed his father to work, his fingers worrying eagerly at the book beneath his coat.  He was nearly finished with the illustrated book of myths his father had given him, and he'd painstakingly read both the Latin and English words.

            As they trudged up the walk to the commodore's house, Johnny groaned loudly.  

            "Hush, my boy," John said, laying a comforting hand on his son's shoulder.  The commodore was pompous enough, but he paid well for his son's education.  Pity, John thought, that it would take more than an education to keep the child from being a fat, bullying git.

            "Hello, Master Sparrow!"  Commodore Wallace held the door open, gesturing widely for the teacher to enter and sparing only a small sneer for the gangly boy following close behind.  "James is waiting for you in the schoolroom upstairs."

            John walked up the stairs, glancing back to see that his son followed.  Johnny never wandered far, especially in the Wallace household.  Today, however, he seemed particularly reluctant to follow.

            "Come along, wild man," John said affectionately, opening the door of the schoolroom.  

            "I've cornered ye, ye scallywag!  Ye worthless, poor scum!"  James Wallace was lying on the floor, his considerable bulk spread out as he poked at something under the desk with his quill.  

            "What have you there, young Wallace?"  John stepped forward, wincing anticipatorily at what he would find.  A small grey kitten, already inkstained and mewling, was crouched in the corner, trying to get away from the great beast who was poking at it.  Sighing wearily, John stood.  "That's quite enough, James, your father wishes you to start your lessons now.  Leave your… pet… until after lessons."

            "As though I've to take orders from a poor _teacher_," the child spat, running an ink-splotched hand over his fair hair.  From the doorway, young Johnny snickered at the mess James had made of himself.

            As the lesson commenced, Johnny sat in the corner, seemingly reading to himself.  It was routine, and a comforting one.  His father would teach, and he would occupy himself in the corner.  But he heard every word his father said, absorbed every bit of knowledge his father paid out to the would-be lords of the wealthy class.  He listened, and he learned, never knowing his talent for such guileless listening would serve him well later in life. 

            "Master Sparrow."  Commodore Wallace's voice boomed through the room.  "A word with you, if you may.  I've a few things I'd like to discuss with you."

            John blinked as though trying to place himself.  "Certainly," he said, standing slowly. 

            "Surely our sons can occupy one another while we have a man-to-man talk, yes?"  The officer put an arm around the teacher, the counterfeit camaraderie of the gesture arousing suspicion in Johnny.

            "Hey, Sparrow," James said, scrambling down from his seat eagerly.  "Here, birdie, birdie, birdie."  Snickering at what he surely thought was his cleverness, he waddled across the room.  "What are you pecking at, poor birdie?  Another book?"  Not bothering to wait for an answer, he snatched the small book from the younger boy's hands.

            "Looky what we've here," he crowed, sitting on the floor and putting his filthy hands all over the book.  With a small whimper, Johnny edged toward him, eager to get it back.  "It's a whore!" he said suddenly, poking his sausage-like finger at the page.

            "'Tisn't a whore," Johnny said, grabbing at the book.  "She's Venus!"  

            Snickering, James ignored Johnny, perusing the pages roughly, wrinkling some and tearing others.

            "Give it back!"  Without planning, or really having an understanding of what he was trying to do, Johnny stood and rushed at the boy, knocking him to the floor.

            "Here, here, what's all this?"  The elder Wallace stood in the doorway, hands on his hips.  "Separate, boys, that's enough."

            "He stole my book!"  Johnny stood, his breath coming in huge, chest-raising gulps.  "Father, my mythology book!"

            Thin-lipped, John stepped forward and drew his son to him, drawing strength from him and giving strength to him.  "Young Master Wallace, what say you?" he asked, dreading the answer.

            "He's a liar," the boy said casually, holding the book.  "It's my book.  Father gave it to me, isn't that right?"  The commodore said nothing.

            With pleading eyes, John turned to the officer.  "Sir, that book belongs to my son.   It was a gift from me for his last birthday.  You may punish your son as you wish, but the lie is his."

            Henry Wallace turned and looked at John, his blue eyes cold and suddenly distant.  "I do recall giving my son that volume, John Sparrow.  And so I ask you this: Do you call me a liar, as well?"

~~~

            Jack rubbed his eyes, the memories of his father overwhelming.  His audience was rapt, he noticed.  Amelia had hardly seemed to blink during his story, all traces of her earlier exhaustion gone.  

            "When John tried to retrieve the book, the Commodore accused him of stealing.  When John refused to concede, Wallace shot him and said he was defending his home from a thief."  He stood and tried a grin, but his face felt too small, too tight, his skin stretched sparsely over his bones.  "And so, losing his only family and his only possession in one terribly short but terrifyingly eternal moment, Johnny ran away and was swallowed by the ocean."  

            Amelia pressed her hand to her mouth, her eyes watering.  "Oh, Jack," she said quietly, unable to say anything more.  No matter what she'd suspected, what she'd imagined, it hadn't been that.

            He stood up and shrugged elaborately.  "There you have it, love.  If it's stories you like, then it's stories Captain Jack has.  What do you say?  Should I write it down?  It's a bonny bit of fiction, if I do say so meself.  I've another spectacular one," he said, flashing his hands at the sides of his face and widening his eyes.  "It has cursed ghosts and a mutiny.  It even has a monkey.  People always enjoy stories with animals, don't they?"  

            Amelia stood then.  "Stop it," she said, her voice low.  He was pained; even a fool could see that.

            He lowered his head to look her directly in the eye.  "No, Miss Hamilton, I suggest it be you who stop.  You asked your question, I answered your question.  Let's not make a big fuss of it, savvy?"

            "Perfectly savvy," she said through clenched teeth.  "Though I realize you'll only tell me the road to hell is paved with good intentions, I must say I intended well when I, as you put it, asked my question.  I'll take care not to ask any more, as I've no wish to travel any road I build in such a manner."  Meeting his eyes for another fraction of a second, she gathered up her skirts and ran from the wardroom.

            He sagged visibly where he stood, his body conforming to its usual stance, and he raised his eyes skyward.  "No, love," he said quietly, "The road to hell is actually paved with Aztec gold."  Feeling inexplicably better despite himself, he headed above deck.  

            He hated to miss the sunset.


	10. Appropriating from the moneyed class

**Author's Note: Several things.  First and foremost, I apologize for the shorter-than-usual chapter; I have started a new job, so bear with me as I juggle my schedule.  Secondly, a reader or two was flummoxed by the Johnny/Jack reference.  Jack was a nickname for John, even in and before the 18th century, so it's completely feasible that Jack would have been a John to begin with, and would have been more likely a "Johnny" if his father were also John.  Hope this clears up any misunderstandings.  Thank you all so much for the reviews, and please please please keep them coming.**

            Had he given thought to the matter before meeting Amelia, Jack would have thought it quite impossible for a woman to make herself nigh to invisible on a pirate ship.  Night was drawing near, however, and he'd not seen so much as a petticoat of her since she'd left the wardroom below decks.

            "Perhaps you _were _a bit too harsh, mate," he told himself, bracing a hand on the wheel of the ship.  But it had been harsh for him as well, thinking of his father, thinking of his boyhood, innocence long past.  

            "Been mighty quiet lately," Gibbs said, sidling up to the captain's side.  Since the missy had boarded the Pearl, there'd been nary a whiff of misbehavior.  It fair broke Gibbs's heart, it did.  "One of the men spotted a merchant ship, sailing north northwest ahead of us.  Slow, she is, likely heavy."

            Jack looked sidelong at Gibbs and let the familiar, wicked grin trail over his face.  It had been far too long since he'd taken a shot at the moneyed class he'd come to mistrust.  Perhaps it was time to remind them that Captain Jack Sparrow was still on the seas.  'Twouldn't do for every idiot with a floating craft to be thinkin' they were safe. 

            "Well, then, Gibbs, what's a merchant without someone to partake of his merchandise?  It's really quite considerate for them to take their wares to the water, else we poor men of the sea would starve to death."  Taking his hat from his head and clapping it to his chest, he sighed mightily.  "Gibbs?  Let us do our part to… make waves in the local trade."  Winking, he began calling orders out to various parts of the ship.

            It was, Amelia thought, much like being rudely awakened from a pleasant doze.  The ship had started to quiet after sundown, and she had watched from the stern of the ship as the men began moving slower, insulting each other less, and taking frequent pauses to yawn.  

            Then Jack—_Captain ­­Jack, she corrected herself—had started calling out orders as casually as a woman might call for her hat.  All the while, he hummed under his breath between commands, tapping his fingers merrily on the wheel in front of him. _

            It was the same man who'd poured his misery out to her, she didn't doubt that for a moment, but this was a man who'd forced himself past all that.  This was a happy man, and though Amelia had found herself moved by his past, she found herself fascinated by his present.

            If such a man could move on, then surely so could she.  

            He saw her finally, amidst the commotion, the running men, the nearly savage lust that ran through them, not for gold but for adventure, for change.  

            He walked across the ship to her, his swagger back in full force, betraying his vanity by smoothing at the already perfect arch of mustache.  "Well, love, I suspect it's nearly time we broke the monotony of the Pearl and did something useful with our checkered pasts and grievous misdeeds."  

            "And I?"  She looked up at him, golden-brown eyes expectant.  "Am I to sit back and watch, or am I contracted to also break the monotony?  If it's required, I can't think 'twould be difficult for me to fabricate a checkered past."  

            He'd expected her to act differently, anticipated it and was ready to despise her for it.  When he saw her jerk her chin into the air and cross her arms over her chest, however, he knew she wasn't about to start treating him like a milksop.  "Though I'm sorely tempted to ask you to man a gun or carry a sword, I seem to recall somewhere in the corner of my brain that those things wouldn't be appropriate."  He wound a finger around the side of his head as though trying to search for something, then flipped his hand in the air in an "Oh, well" gesture.  

            "Because propriety is your forte," Amelia said, distracted by the swarms of action on deck.  Edging to his left to better see what they were approaching, she stretched to her toes and flapped a hand at him as though to tell him to be quiet.

            Jack raised an eyebrow, stepping back into her line of sight.  "I beg your pardon, love, I hate to be the one to trod upon your fun, but I've something to give ye, and then your pretty little head will be deposited in my cabin, whereupon you will stay on threat of death."

            That brought her eyes back to him, and in a hurry.  "Threat of death?  From who?"

            Feeling gleeful, he slung an arm around her shoulders and began to lead her below.  "First of all, love, I'm shocked at you.  From _whom.  _Surely you meant to say 'whom.'  And furthermore, on threat of death from me."

            She didn't know which was more humiliating, that he'd corrected her grammar or that he'd threatened to kill her.  "You'd not kill me even if given proper opportunity," she said, but she didn't shrug off his arm.  

            He said nothing but guided her below deck and squared her in front of the wardrooms, his hands on her shoulders.  When she started to speak, he put a finger to his lips and rolled his eyes upward.  "Aye, listen to them up there, carrying on like a pack of the wildest animals."  He lowered his gleaming eyes back to hers and winked.  "Music to my ears, love."  He grabbed something off a stack of crates and tossed it to her.  "There y'are, love, something other than that dress to sleep in.  Now back up ye go, tuck yourself nice and snug into that bed of yours, and don't come out, no matter what you hear."  

            "'Tisn't appropriate for you to give me a dressing gown," she stated flatly, draping it over her arm and putting a hand to her hip.  She wanted to see what was going on, and it was going to take no small amount of coercion to get her to do otherwise.  

            Sighing dramatically, Jack threw his hands in the air.  "Love, let us get a little somethin' perfectly clear.  Pirate equals not appropriate, savvy?  In fact, I'd rather be appropriately inappropriate than inappropriately appropriate, which is what so many people do, or worse still, appropriately appropriate, which is not only frightfully boring but also a pain in my hindquarters.  Now, if you will, take your propriety and apply it to traipsing back up to my cabin, I'd greatly appreciate it."

            She muttered under her breath all the way to the door of the cabin, where she flung it open and stepped just inside, ready to throw down the gown and march right back out.  The industrious captain, however, stood right in her path.

            "One more thing, love.  For a woman so concerned with propriety, I feel moved—nay, _obligated—_to point out to you that it was hardly appropriate for you to show up on my ship, soaked in rum and wearing a dress thin enough to count freckles through.  I think I made it to thirty-two."

            She was still standing just inside the door, jaw completely agape, when he shut the door gently… and barred it from the outside.


	11. Money lovers

            Her blood was the first thing to move after the door shut.  She felt it rush to her head, heated by anger.  

            He'd locked her in, the mangy cur.

            Almost as an afterthought, Amelia ducked her head and looked, as best she could, down her bodice.  "Oh, heavens," she sighed, seeing several freckles indeed peeking out over the top edge of the dress.  Embarrassment layered over anger, and Amelia called Jack a few more names for good measure.

            Turning to face the interior of the cabin rather than that blasted, heavy wooden door, Amelia tapped a finger to her lips and studied her surroundings.  The area was slightly cleaner, several of the piles of laundry gone,her cot clearl visible now.  There was no way she'd be able to sleep, knowing what was going on outside.  As her eyes lit on the thick spreads adorning Jack's bed, she smiled wickedly.

            If she was to be locked away like a fugitive, then she'd by God do some exploring.

~~~

            It was almost too easy, Jack mused his feet hit the deck of the merchant ship.  It was as though these people had forgotten there were pirates and mistakenly thought they were safe,

            People had apparently forgotten Captain Jack Sparrow.  Worse yet, his crew seemed to have forgotten their purpose entirely.

            "Let's sink 'em," one young man had proclaimed excitedly, jostling Jack's arm and nearly jumping up and down.  

            It was hard to be patient with callow youth.

            "Let us take a moment, Charles," Jack had said, turning to the man, "And reflect on our mission, shall we?  Take what you can…" he paused, seeing if his crew member would finish the unofficial motto.  When he didn't, Jack merely sighed and continued to speak.  "Give nothing back.  How will we do that if we send it all to the bottom of the ocean floor?"  

            Charles had merely looked dumbfounded.

            Now, however, with a few select members of his crew slinking about the heavily-laden ship, Jack smiled.  The rich were such easy—and deserving—targets.  

            "Halt."  The faint scrape of steps sounded to Jack's left, and he turned, hands already raised, an amicable smile lifting his lips.  A tall, thin man held a pistol pointed at Jack's head, his eyes shifty but continually falling back to Jack.

            "Just the man I wanted to see," Jack said jovially, stepping toward the man and watching with enjoyment as his quarry, though armed, took a step in retreat.  

            "Take another step and I'll put a ball through that filthy brain of yours."  The man, well-dressed enough to make Jack believe he was the shillings behind the ship, brandished the gun in the way cowards and the afraid always did.  

            "Then I suppose it's in my best interest to stop, aye?"  Jack did so, bowing deeply, mockingly.  

            "Damned pirates," the man said, sweat popping out on his brow as the sounds of shouts and scuffles carried from other parts of the ship.  "Haven't you seen all the others of your kind, hung all over the seas?"

            As threats went, Jack judged it as pitiful.  

            "Hanged," he said through his teeth, exasperated.  "They've been hanged, you fool, not hung."  Leaning forward, hands still aloft, he widened his eyes and spoke in a low, silky voice.  "You know, mate, I've actually been hanged before.  To be perfectly honest, which I rarely am, so you'd better listen, all it did was make me a mite taller."

            The nearly-whispered statement, combined with the sound of a nearby gunshot, was all it took to have the man cold on the planks of the ship.  Sighing disgustedly, Jack kicked the man's weapon away and went to work emptying his pockets.

            It was just too damned easy.

~~~

            Amelia was starting to think her bunkmate owned precious little.  In a half an hour of searching, all she'd found were an apple, a pair of badly scarred boots, and a stunningly heavy dagger with a jeweled hilt.  That, she thought as she threw a narrow-eyed glance at the door, might come in handy when Sir Sparrow himself saw fit to come back.

            In a last effort to find something to occupy her mind, she swept a small hand under the bed and felt her fingertips brush something solid.  She didn't bother holding in the gasp that came when she closed her fingers around the object and identified it.  A book, any book other than her own two, was precious indeed.  As she withdrew it from its hiding place and held it to the light, a small smile shaped her lips.  _The Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Rome _was inked lightly on the cover, no author indicated.  

            Sitting on the floor, the dagger in her lap, Amelia began to flip through the pages gingerly, stopping with reverence at a cunning drawing of Venus.

            As she looked closer, Amelia drew a short breath, snatching her hand away from the page.  "Oh, my," she whispered suddenly, her eyes drawn to the upper right corner of the page, where several inky fingerprints dotted the paper.

~~~

            He'd ordered them to leave the ship intact and leave everyone on it relatively unharmed.  After all, if they sunk the ship and the people on it, who would spread the refurbished word of Captain Jack Sparrow's nefarious reputation?

            "Down to the holds men, Gibbs be the clinker for the evening.  Give 'im what ye got, he'll give ye what ye deserve."  Turning in a circle, looking at his men, he bowed grandly.  "Of course, I deserve the most, and so the lion's share will be given to me."

            Good-natured insults were thrown about the gathered crowd, dying down as one of the crewmen shouted out his opinion.  "Gibbs give me what I deserve, aye?  Such a good boy I been, I deserves a bit of that missy ye're hidin' in yer cabin."

            The next few moments would be replayed in the minds of every crewman on the ship, and every man would remember it a different way.  Gibbs would his credit own amazement to the gin he'd been drinking, young Charles would tell the story as honestly as he could, with the exaggeration only the very young or very old can muster.  Anamaria would not tell the story at all, but remember feeling just a little regret.  Jack himself would reluctantly attribute the move to post-raid aggression.  

            Though the throng of men was thick around Jack, he drew his sword so quickly and surely that none of them saw it until it was among them, the point sharp and gleaming in the moonlight, pointed at one crewman's throat.

            He'd had no sure way of knowing whose words had carried above the group, but he had, and his reaction was quicker than any of them had every imagined.

            Jack stared down the length of his sword at the now-trembling man at the end of it, one eyebrow cocked negligently, his body relaxed rather than tense.  "Daniel, isn't it?"  The man swallowed and nodded with the barest of movements.  "Though I realize we're pirates, Daniel, rogues and thieves, I'm a pretentious sort, and I like to flash the gentleman now and then, savvy?"  Another barely stirring nod.  "Good.  Then if you can keep yourself from having enough tongue for two sets of teeth, I'm quite certain we'd all feel better about the matter."  And with that, the sword was back in its sheath, Jack stalking toward the cabin.

            The Black Pearl had never been so silent.


	12. Beg pardon, love

**Author's note: As I go on, this piece becomes more and more challenging to write.  Thank you all for the effusive feedback, and if I begin to go astray in any part of my writing, do not hesitate to let me know.  For now, I am enjoying the praise, suggestions, and support you all are giving me.  If my updates begin to slow, have no fear.  I'll never make you wait _too long.**_

            The bright peaks and resplendent inhabitants of Olympians suddenly shattered to pieces as Amelia's carefully constructed mental mural was interrupted by the sounds of shouts, shrieks, and feet pounding across the deck.  She couldn't tell if the Pearl's crew had been victorious, or if they'd finally had the tables turned on them.  

            She'd been sitting for far too long, and as she stood, her ankles tingled with the pins and needles of long discomfort.  To read the Roman myths had been interesting, but to read the words that had accompanied Jack's childhood had been irresistible.  Now, however, with ample evidence that the pirates were back from their pirating, Amelia's curiosity reared its head again.  Sliding the book under the bed, she vowed to come back to it—and to find out exactly how Jack had came to own it again.  

            Amelia hefted the dagger in her hand and crossed to the door, pressing her ear to it.  Pushing her shoulder against the heavy wood, she listened to the rattle of iron the movement produced.  Taking a deep breath, she shoved the blade between the door and the jamb, hoping for the scrape of metal on metal.  If she could pry around the hasp holding the door, she could get out and see what in Zeus's name all the commotion was about.

            So intent was she on her task that Amelia didn't notice the shouts die down or the consequent sound of approaching footsteps. 

            Feeling the hasp give a little, Amelia gasped and leaned harder on the door.  

            She was still grasping the dagger in her fist when she spilled out the door and at Jack's feet.

~~~

            "Bloody joykill," Jack muttered as he walked away from the gathered crew.  Stalking toward the latched door to his cabin, he talked to himself with increasing volume.  "What I need is a good stiff drink and a good loose woman."  So saying, he flipped the piece of iron that held Amelia captive.

            He saw the door swing toward him and jumped back with an oath on his lips.  If he'd been a bit slower, the idiot would have sliced him open.  As he looked down on the pile of breathless woman at his feet, he noted she would have sliced him open with his own dagger.  

            "Cock and pie!" she spat, wrestling with the skirts of her dress to stand.  "It's about bloody time you came back.  'Tisn't an animal I am, I don't need to be locked away."  In her embarrassment, Amelia became defensive, and as always, her face gave her away.  A very strong and very guilty blush crept over her cheeks as she slapped dirt from her bottom.

            Though the sight of her little hands slapping at that rear was enticing, Jack couldn't quite wrap his head around the fact that he'd been defending the woman's honor while she'd been sacking through his things.  Spreading a hand in the direction of the thoroughly tossed room, he bit back a curse.  This was the woman he'd nearly offed a member of his crew for.  Irony was a relentless bitch.  "What exactly is it you were attempting to do, love?"  

            "Escape, isn't that quite clear?"  Rolling her eyes, she slapped the dagger blade-first into the hand and crossed her arms over her chest.  "Well?" she said expectantly, tapping her foot on the deck.  

            "Well, what?  You've nothing to get from me, ye nagging shrew!" he exclaimed, tossing the weapon into the room and nodding with satisfaction as it stuck into the wall next to his bed.  He whirled on her then, finger pointed at her.  "Don't expect me to do what ye say simply because ye act wronged.  I've played that particular tune too many times in my life to start to dance to it meself."  He paced a few steps away, then turned back.  "Besides, Miss Appropriate, oh She of the Blueblood Manners, it would be best if ye'd just forget about tonight.  I highly doubt someone of your sensitively sensitive sensibilities would much like to hear of thievery."  But when he looked at her, what he saw wasn't judgment.

            It was more of that insatiable curiosity.

            _Why, he wondered, __oh, why can't she be insatiable elsewhere?  "Stop looking at me like that.  It was just an on-and-off sort of deal.  The man on the ship was a pantywaist jack of legs, passed out on the deck just like a weak-stomached woman, and we took his things."  Speaking quickly, he flicked a hand in the air dismissively, and she noticed the glitter of one new ring.  "Go on," he said loudly.  "In case you're out of practice with your impeccable morals, now is when you judge, love, when you tell me what a cad I am."_

            Amelia tore her eyes away from the ring and met eyes with him coolly.  The fun-loving, tempting devil's eyes were back, having been only temporarily replaced by the eyes of a mere mortal.  "Though I'm sure you think it has escaped my notice, it occurs to me that my sensitively sensitive sensibilities are not half as well-rooted as your piratical impulses.  Therefore, I concede to your pastime and take what enjoyment I can from it, as I, too, can be a selfish sort." As she'd spoken, she'd intentionally let her words gather momentum, tumbling over one another in a half-slurred patter that very closely matched his.  As she wrapped up her speech, she cocked her head challengingly.

            "Well then, they're your sensibilities."  He offered his arm to her, smiling pleasantly, and she counted herself the victor as she took his arm.

            Then he began to speak, casually, conversationally, with the viper he had in place of a tongue.

            "You know, love, I passed up something positively wonderful on that ship, and had I realize I was in such need of it, I'd have certainly picked it up and tucked it into my sack, but whyever would I have dreamed of needing a muzzle for a human?"

            As he led her below decks to see the booty for herself, Amelia wondered why she hadn't held onto the dagger after all.

~~~

            From a dark corner near the shot locker, Daniel Carrington watched his captain with a jaundiced eye, speaking to the few men gathered around him in low, hissing tones.  

            "It's a bloody insult, it is.  I don't want to work on no bloody hen-frigate, that's for sure.  I'd sooner be hanged by a bit o'red than stay on a ship where a filly rules all, especially when she's no more'n a stowaway, playin' whore for the crazy cap'n--"

            "That crazy captain isn't the only one on this ship who'd just as soon kill ye as look at ye, ye gotch-gutted idiot."  A mouthful of spit hit the deck at Daniel's feet, the perfect accompaniment to the words Anamaria spoke.  "She's no more whore than you are commodore."  

            Daniel's face turned the ugly purple of an enraged drunk and he stood to face the smaller woman.  "Ye think so, do ye?  Well, yer a fine one to talk, woman.  No one wanted ye on this ship in the first place, no matter how much ye dress like a man.  Surely 'tis beggin' for the Devil's own ire to house a Mary dressed as a Davey, eh, boys?"  He shoved at Anamaria, sending her into plain sight of both Jack and Amelia.

            Jack had brought her to the hold reluctantly, showing her what they'd gotten merely because she seemed to take such a joy in it.  Jack knew as surely as he knew it about himself that she'd seen little beauty and even littler joy in her life.  The least he could do was show her the prettier side of the Caribbean.

            Or he would have, had Daniel not started laying hands on Anamaria.  "Hold here," he told Amelia in a low voice, starting over to the scuffle with his deceptively slow walk, his seemingly distracted air.

            At that moment, she couldn't have moved even if she'd wanted to.  As Daniel shouted at Anamaria, his words became another's, the furious gestured mirrored a thousand times in Amelia's mind.

            "Oh, ho there cap'n, ye come to draw yer big sword, show us all how great y'are?"  

            _Oh, where ye goin', Amelia, yer nose stuck in a book again?  Go outside and play with yer brother, ye unnatural thing.  _

            "Oh, no, Daniel, I've just come to see what the popular subject of discussion was.  You know, I'm never quite able to resist a conversation when it's all about me.  Happens to be my favorite topic, you know."  

            Daniel's face clouded as that of a scolded child and he glared at Jack from beneath two thick, black eyebrows.  "Aye, ye're a bastard like that, y'are," he said petulantly, holding an empty bottle by the neck.

            _Yer__ such a greedy slattern, y'know that?  Why won't ye share with me, sister?_

            "I find myself disappointed in you, Daniel, for I thought we surely discussed this matter early and found ourselves at a much less disappointing conclusion than the one I'm forced to face at the moment, which is that you're unable to keep your mouth from being such a bagpipe."  Laying a hand to his chest, he shook his head sorrowfully. 

            "Forget ye and yer bloody disappointment, _Captain.  Go on about your business, tuppin' yer  game-pullet there."  Sneering, his bravery restored, Daniel tossed the bottle in Amelia's direction, jeering loudly as she uttered a small scream._

            _Forget about yer wages, ye lazy whore.  _

            And when the bottle broke, that meant broken glass, and the cuts that inevitably came with it.

            Blind to the things around her and sick with the knowledge that she'd never be able to escape what was past, Amelia stared wide-eyed at each of the pirates in turn, and last of all at Jack, then gathered her skirts and fled to the upper deck.

            As she went, the two halves of Jack split further, one half wishing to dole out retribution to the drunk, foul-mouthed young pirate in front of him, the other half wishing to follow his charge above.

            Taking a handful of the man's shirt and twisting it into a crude but effective garrote, Jack brought his face close to Daniel's and spoke without a slur.  "Make you no mistake, mate, should I find you handling another crew member or even saying something so mild as you don't the way I dress, you'll be finding your neck a bit longer than 'twas before you started out."  

            He released the man and turned away without looking back, and he could tell by the sounds of movement behind him that the only listeners Daniel had gathered were already moving away.

            She was in her cot when he crept into his cabin, still in the dress rather than the nightwear he'd found for her.  Her back was to him, and she was perfectly still.

            For her sake, he hoped she was asleep.

            "I'd ask your pardon," he said quietly, scrubbing a hand over his face.  "But ye'd not pardon one such as myself."

            Her eyes squeezed tightly shut, blocking out the sights and sounds of the family she'd never loved, Amelia felt her heart break just a little more. 


	13. Love of fire

            The shame, it seemed, followed her wherever she went.  It didn't matter if her brother and her mother were dead or alive, present or absent, she was still ashamed, because she was still afraid.  

            She rose shortly after dawn, no longer surprised to see that Jack was already out of bed and out of the cabin.  She'd been a little regretful of that fact in the few mornings she'd spent on the ship, but this particular morning she welcomed the solitude.  She planned on keeping it close to her for the days to come, hugging the solitude as, once upon a time, she would have liked to have hugged her father. 

            It was easier to be ashamed by yourself than be ashamed for everyone to see. 

            After rising, she crept about the ship, finding dark corners and deserted rooms in which to finish the captain's laundry.  If she encountered any of the crew, she kept her head up, eyes straight ahead, her steps light, not drawing attention to herself.  She listened for Jack's voice and veered away from it, her cheeks burning.  She'd fled last night, fled from among men who feared nothing simply because of a little shouting and a little broken glass.

            Ridiculous, her educated mind told her, but her heart still trembled. 

            Because she'd done naught but work all through the day, stopping only to snag a piece of bread from the galley, she was finished with the dirty laundry by the time the sun started to glow orange instead of white-hot in the sky.  Now, instead of large innumerable piles of soiled cloth, Jack's cabin was lined by neat, folded stacks of salt-roughened clothing.  

            "Are ye going to teach me somethin', then, or are ye just goin' to continue working yerself to bare bones?"  Anamaria had watched, bemused and bewildered, as the woman swept about the ship like a hurricane, lugging her tub, soap, and clothes from bow to stern, port to starboard.  She was lucky she hadn't fallen over yet, for in Anamaria's estimation, the missy was working on little sleep and littler food.  

            Amelia pressed a hand to her throat, feeling the helpless little shriek trapped there.  She'd nearly screamed at Anamaria's words, at the silence of her day being broken.  "I beg your pardon, Anamaria, I did not realize how late it was."

            "Ye beg _my _pardon?"  Anamaria's brows drew down and she leaned to look into the woman's eye.  "Ye feelin' all right, high-nose?  Ye seems a bit off."

            "Fine," Amelia responded automatically.  "Let me fetch my books, and we'll begin."

            Anamaria continued to frown as the bronze-clad laundress walked across the decks, head down in a manner completely unlike her usual one.  The woman had boarded the ship and threatened the captain straightaway, not a whit of fear or shame in her—so what on earth had bowed her head now?

            Jack sat by the wheel of the ship, his attention drawn away from the sunset and to the small woman crossing the deck of his ship.  What he saw wasn't primarily fear, but wounded pride.  What he saw was a dampening of the fire he'd been so drawn to.

            He wished he'd killed her ogre of a brother when he'd had the chance.

~~~

            Determined to try and bring things to an even keel, Anamaria sniped at her instructor at every opportunity, wanting to rouse the woman's anger, or at least her exasperation.  Anamaria didn't care for that thin look of exhaustion that Amelia was sporting, especially when she thought it might affect Jack.

            "Why are ye doing this?" she asked, shoving the book in front of her away.  "What's the purpose of tryin' to make me a learned woman?"

             Amelia could have answered the question easily enough a few days ago, but now she was hard-pressed for an immediate response.  The pirates lived with their own rules, by their own wits.  They answered only to Jack, and they feared very little, if anything.  So to what end was she educating Anamaria?

            "It may be one day you'll tire of the seas," she said finally, hedging around the question.  "You could get a job on land.  You could find a man."  At this, Amelia smiled a little.

            Anamaria sighed heavily and studied her teacher carefully.  "I found one, once."  Her eyes flicked to the doorway of the wardroom and she stood, speaking lowly so only Amelia could hear.  "And now, girly, it seems he's found you."  She left the room, once again feeling the heavy regret that had begun to plague her more often than not.

            Confused at the female pirate's declaration, it took Amelia nearly a full minute to look up.  

            She wouldn't have ever applied the word 'beautiful' to such a man a week before, but looking at him now, her weary brain and wrung-out emotions could conjure up no other word.  He stood in the doorway of the wardroom, lounging negligently against the solid wood of the ship, cleaning his fingernails with yet another dagger, this one shorter and wickedly sharpened.  The beadwork and miscellany in his hair caught the scant light below deck, but not half as much as his dark eyes did. 

            He was staring at her just as intently as she was staring at him, and when she finally broke her eyes away from him, he began to speak as though the moment hadn't passed at all.  

            "I got to ruminating earlier, and a sudden realization struck me.  It's quite a shame, really, to have a ship with a pirate who can cook—not well, mind you, but he does cook occasionally, and he hardly ever tries to poison us—when not even the ship's stowaway will eat.  In fact, it seems my literature-loving laundress has taken to starving herself.  You know, love, should you be lacking for something to take up your spare time, I'm sure we can find something much better than watching your skin wear away to nothing."  He paused for a moment, deep in further rumination.  "I've seen a bit of that, and it's not pretty."

            Suddenly wanting the motion, wanting something to keep herself busy, she began to gather her books, standing so quickly she knocked the underside of the table with her knees, wincing as she did so.  "Pardon me," she said quickly, trying to pass him and knowing she'd surely fail.

            "Alas, the day has come," he all but wailed, latching a strong, wiry hand around her arm and forcing her to be a captive audience.  "Curse the day when Captain Jack Sparrow can't keep a woman for a few second's company.  I knew the day would come, but I lament that it has actually come so soon."  Rolling his eyes to meet hers, he pulled his full lower lip into a pout.  "Surely you can spare my pride only a few moments, love, so as I don't become overwhelmed with the urge to fling myself overboard."

            His grasp should have reminded her of another, the fingers pressing into the laddering scar up her arm should have seared phantom pain into the extremity.  Instead, all she felt was guilt for having dragged this man into the hell she'd tried to escape.

            "Listen and listen well," she enunciated slowly, twisting just enough to make him release her arm.  "For I believe you'll be more than pleased to hear what I've to say next, as it's what you've been wanting me to say since I climbed aboard your ship."

            His eyebrows shot up.  "You've realized I'm the finest pirate in this half of the world, then?"

            Ignoring his levity, she pressed on.  "You never indicated to your crew that I'd tried to garner your favor before, and for that I thank you.  Moreover, what I set out to say is that I made a mistake.  You were right in denying me passage, captain."

            He nodded sagely, fingers stroking his beard in a familiar habit.  "Aye, love, I'd near to agree with ye, if ye're going to keep that attitude.  For here I thought ye were a fighter, and so I thought to meself 'She'll do no harm to yer ship, Jack, a woman so fierce.'  But be it as yer actually a coward underneath that shrew's tongue—"  He shrugged elaborately, the theatrical regret on his face nearly comical.  "—Well, then I'd say you are, indeed, inescapably correct in your conclusion that you don't belong on my ship and that you were, in fact, incorrect in pursuing me in the first place."  He walked away from her and spoke without turning back.  "Because frankly, love, I detest weak women."  He heard the books hit the table and tensed, waiting for what he most fervently hoped would come next.

            She shoved him from behind, making him stumble a bit.  When he turned to face her, her eyes were filled with tears, but her chin was back up and her voice was gaining volume by the second.

            "Listen to me, you purposefully ignorant thief, 'tisn't as though I'm shrinking away, 'tisn't as though I'm some lily-livered filly!  I merely though this rickety, o'ergrown bucket with sails could take me away from my troubles, and instead all I got in exchange were more troubles, and bigger troubles, a trouble with a big mouth and hair decked like a bloody Christmas tree!"  She reached out a hand and flicked at one of the thick locks hanging over his bandana.  

            He clamped his hand around her wrist, touching middle finger to thumb.  "Don't touch my hair, love, if all you're going to do is hurt my feelings over it."  But he was smiling now, gold winking here and there.  It was much better to see an angry filly than a whipped one.  Letting his dark eyes fall down from her eyes to her nose, her nose to her chin, and come to a rest at the expanse of skin from her throat down, Jack trailed a long, stained, work-roughened finger over the soft skin stretched over her collarbone.  "You need to eat something," he said with finality.  "I like to work a bit to see bones on a woman, savvy?" Winking at what she considered his own cryptic idiocy, he released her wrist and headed above.

            Unbidden, Anamaria's words cropped back up in her head as Amelia put her hand over the skin he'd just touched.  _And now, girly, it seems he's found you.  _

            "Damn you, Jack Sparrow," Amelia sighed, turning to retrieve her books.  It was hard to think of the hard touches of another when she could still feel his fingers.


	14. Dream lover

            It was hard enough to find a few hours' sleep when your past tortured you, or when you were trying to scheme up new ways to try everything under the sun, but it was nigh to impossible to sleep when a woman slept only feet from you, making womanly little noises in her sleep.  

            Scowling at the ceiling, Jack tried to block out the occasional catchy sigh or small moan that came from Amelia's cot.  Gritting his teeth, he raised his hands to his head, clutching double handfuls of the thick masses of his hair.  If he didn't, he was going to end up touching her.  Or himself.

            Things had been back to what passed as normal between them for several days, her sniping at him every few moments and him making obscene comments every chance he was given.  But he didn't miss the looks she gave him now and then when she thought he wasn't looking, the long studying looks that made him feel like a youth with no self-control.  He hadn't much control to begin with, and she was chipping away what little remained.

            Taking long, even breaths and trying to calculate the soonest the ship could come into a friendly port, Jack thought of escapades of the past.  Not a one of them had involved a sharp-tongued, outspoken woman with more brains than breasts.  But he'd always said he'd try anything once.

            As though on cue, another nearly inaudible whimper escaped her lips and Jack cursed.  She wanted to sleep below in the wardrooms, by God, she could.  It would save him many sleepless, sweaty nights.

            His arousal turned cold, however, when the quiet, small noises turned into something grittier, like the cries of a trapped animal.  What had surely started as a pleasant dream had undoubtedly taken a nasty turn, and Jack propped himself up on one elbow to watch her, his dark eyebrows drawn together.  She lay perfectly still, hands clenched into fists, her eyes no longer restfully closed but rather squeezed shut, moisture gathered in the corners of them.  "No," she said quite clearly, tossing her head and facing away from him.

            _They'd done it before, but not so persistently.  It was a game with them, something to laughed at, but it held true fear for the girl.  "Come on, lovey, darling, you'll like it.  Mummy likes it, see?"  _

_            Taletha grasped the greasy bottle in her talon-like fingers, wetting her lips like an eager dog before she drank.  Philip, a gangling adolescent, sat on the floor, his beefy hand gripping the nape of his sister's neck.  "It's only a bit of All Nations, weakling."_

_            And the words that scared Amelia most of all started falling like rocks from her mother's lips.  "Don't you want to be like Mother, darling 'Melia?  Don't you want to be like us?"_

"Stop now, love.  I think ye've seen enough of this particular show, haven't you?"  Not a hand at her neck, after all, but one stroking over her forehead, over the hair she'd once been so proud of.

            "Surely there's better things in the world to be dreamin' about than whatever's doin' this to ye, love.  If you were as trig a lass as you'd like to think, ye'd be dreamin' about me, instead." 

            Her hand shot up to cover his, adding weight to the warmth on her brow.  She kept her eyes shut, afraid if she opened them she'd cry.  "Jack," she said, his name a statement rather than an inquiry.

            "That's 'Captain' to you, stowaway."  He sat back on the floor beside her cot, sliding his hand from under hers and resting his elbows on his knees.  He was relieved she was awake, but reluctant to keep his hands on her when her eyes were open.  He could flash the gentleman all he liked, but he certainly wasn't one.  "Before you start in on me, I already know.  Bad luck to wake the sleeping.  'Course, my last transgression of such a sort was easily remedied by a drink.  Fancy one yourself, love?"

            Her eyes snapped open and she sat up, edging backward as though he'd offered her a live snake.  "No," she said shaking her head.  "No drink."

            A sore point, he noted.  "No offense intended, love, at least not this time around," he said, watching her with interest.  He'd never actually been next to a woman when she'd awakened.  There wasn't time for sleeping when you were paying a woman by the hour, and heaven knew Jack had a hard enough time keeping matters within his time limit as it was.  

            "They tried to make me drink, starting when I was twelve or thirteen," she said, shaking her head.  "That's what—that's what you woke me from."  He nodded, and surprisingly said nothing.  Amelia let go a bitter laugh, more cynical than cheerful by far.  "'Tis just the way of my life that the first friend—the _only ­_friend—I've made in my miserable, lamentable existence is a man.  And not only a man, but a pirate to boot."  Now that he'd receded back to his bed, back to his side of the room, the pinching fingers on the back of her neck wandered, phantom and cold, squeezing with the weight of years.  Finding her eyes drawn to the long-fingered hand Jack had negligently let dangle over the side of the bed, Amelia bit her lip.

            _Is this how people go mad at sea? she wondered, feeling a thin sheen of sweat pop over her forehead.  __They just want something irrational until they go mad for wanting it?_

Jack looked at the ceiling, reluctant to look at her.  She'd finally worn the gown he'd bestowed upon her, but since she'd eaten next to nothing, it was too big on her by far, the bodice gaping where it shouldn't gape and affording him views of things best left unviewed.  "What can I say, love?" he said, fighting to sound nonchalant.  "I've just a way with women."

            There were a few moments of silence, and then Captain Jack Sparrow, scourge of the Caribbean, nearly swallowed his tongue.  

            The shrew, the freckled, intelligent, haunted, beautiful shrew, had grabbed his hand and twined her fingers into it.  

            "What is it you're doing, love?"  He sat up a bit, watching as she ducked her head and brushed his fingers over the back of her neck, eyes on his the entire time.

            "It makes me forget," she said insistently.  She didn't know what else to say, but there were a wealth of other things that had made her move toward him, all of them completely unspeakable.  Women in books might be free with their desires, but women in real life were not.  Real women weren't supposed to feel like they were going to catch fire from the inside when a man looked at them.  Real women weren't supposed to spend long minutes of longer days thinking about the calloused hands of a lawless man.          

            Real women weren't supposed to yearn for what was surely the Devil himself.

            "And I owe you," she added quietly, taking her hand from his and letting her eyes drift shut when he left it there, gently kneading the tense muscles in the back of her neck.

            He'd long ago stopped keeping track of the different counts for which he was surely being sent to Hell when he died, but Jack mentally tallied another reason for eternal damnation as he sat up to reach her with his other hand.  Exerting his few remaining shreds of self-control, he rested his hands heavily on her shoulders.  "Ye don't owe me, Amelia."  Oh, but how he wished she did.

            Hurt, rejected, she opened her eyes, the honey of them hot with insistence, the want simmering in her thickening her voice to the low class she'd been born to.  "Oh, then, is it that ye're tryin' to say ye doesn't want it from me, Jack Sparrow?  You with yer beer-garden jaw you were, tryin' to get me into a warm bed with ye, and were willin' to pay for it, as well, and pay prettily."  

            He grinned then, the fierce mad grin of a man who's lost his last hold on himself, a wild grin she'd seen more than once on his countenance.  His hands tightened on her shoulders and he jerked enough to have her head falling back, his lips once again at her throat as they had been before.  

            "It's unwise to push a pirate, milady," he said thickly, just before lowering his lips to the pulse throbbing in her neck, nipping quickly with teeth before bringing his lips to hers.

            It did more than make her forget, it swept away most of the capacity for thought left in Amelia.  Save for bumbling attempts made by her brother's cronies, she'd never been kissed before, never had a man so close.  Not knowing what to do with her hands, she fisted them at her sides as he slid his tongue inside her mouth, a great deal gentler than she ever would have expected of him.  Uncertain of herself, she began to mimic the movements of his mouth.

            She was kissing him back.  Jack liked to think he was prepared for anything, and had proven it more than once.  What he couldn't talk his way out of, he could fight his way out of, and failing that, he was smarter than everyone gave him credit for.  But she'd kissed him back, and in doing so, knocked his brain back several steps.  He eased back from her, eyes wide and wild, licking his lips like a prowling cat.

            Where, exactly, did want end and need begin?

            Careful not to pinch or bruise, mindful of the things she'd been through, the things she still relived all too often Jack tugged her arms until she sat on his bed.  If she could have spoken clearly, she might have told him she didn't have a choice.  A person couldn't stand or kneel on knees gone to water.

            She sat stock upright in the bed, hands still clenched into fists, mind racing.  She wanted to touch him, the tanned skin showing between the gap in his ever-present, filthy white shirt, wanted to slide her hands over the chest she'd seen nearly a week ago.  But she'd told him she wasn't common, and she didn't want him to think she was. 

            "Scared, then, love?" he asked, glancing at her stiff posture.

            She shook her head in negation.  "No."  Her voice hadn't lost its surety, but rang true to his ears.  "'Tis only I don't know what to do."

            He grinned again at the prospect of a challenge, of someone to teach.  It seemed, no matter what she thought, the missy didn't know everything after all.

            "I've a simple place for you to start," he said, leaning forward to taste the spot below her ear.  "I know you've a powerful curiosity, love, so put it to use and touch me." 


	15. Learning Love

**Author's note: Thanks for the encouragement, to everyone who reviewed… even though some of it was forceful, it was motivating, to say the least.  I hope what follows lives up to your expectations.**

            She tentatively reached out a hand, eyes already on the skin she so desperately wanted to touch.  Spreading her palm flat, Amelia slipped her hand inside Jack's shirt, sliding her palm over the hot, smooth skin above his heart.

            He took in a short breath as though pained and laid his hand over hers, his eyes hooded.  "I've a bit of a demand, love.  If you start nattering about propriety at any point during this night's proceeding, I will toss you overboard."

            "I think this falls under something you didn't mention at all," Amelia said, fascinated with the race of his heart under her searching fingers.  "Inappropriately inappropriate."  She leaned down and kissed his hand that trapped her to him, catching the salt of the sea and the other flavors of his skin.  She was hesitant in her ministrations, though, moving her lips from his hand to his throat.  Every few seconds she would glance up at him to see his face, to find approval.  If there was anything Amelia hated, it was being ignorant.  

            She wanted to learn quickly and learn well.

            Tugging at his shirt, impatient with the obstruction, she finally managed to pull it over his head, her eyes fastened solidly on his torso.  She traced her fingertips over the whorls and lines of dark hair smattered over it, letting her hand follow the path down his lean stomach and to his waistband.  

            She could feel his heart racing, hear his breath catching, and marveled at the power of it.  What must it take to make a man so powerful tremble?  A man so cockily unafraid of everything?

            "Cowper shows only a few fundamental differences between men and women," she said, referring to her amateur studies into human anatomy.

            "I hardly think now's the time to lecture, love," Jack said in a strangled voice, straining against action, against grabbing her and doing everything that was racing through his mind.  He'd told her to touch at her will, and though it was enjoyable enough, it was going to the death of him.  He estimated it would only be a matter of minutes before the last drop of blood drained from his head into his lap and he died.

            Ignoring his protests, intent on her lesson, Amelia continued speaking.  "A difference here," she said, lowering her lips to his chest and pressing a kiss to his flat nipple.  "And here."  She was more apprehensive about this next move, her lips caught between her teeth.

            Anticipating her with a half-grin on his face, Jack caught her hand in his and urged it below his waist, though it cost him a great deal.  He was going to finish before he started, like an idiot boy, if she kept talking and touching.

            The color rose in her cheeks immediately as she pressed her palm against his arousal, feeling the heat searing through his clothing, the hardness straining against cloth.  "That," she managed in a stuttering voice, "Wasn't quite clear in the book."

            Unable to hold any longer, Jack put a hand to her back and dragged her to him, her hand still trapped between them as he lowered his head to the gaping neckline of her gown.  Beyond seduction, beyond silver-tongued words and playful innuendo, he closed his teeth over her collarbone, gasping when her hips drove up sharply.  "Found something to your taste, did I, love?" he asked in a mutter before sliding his tongue under the laced edge of the bodice and between her breasts.

            It felt, she thought wildly, as though every bit of heat in her was centered between her thighs, the muscles in her legs weak and shaking as he raised his hand to apply those long, clever fingers to her breasts.

            She latched a hand in his hair reflexively, feeling the ropes of it twine around her fingers.  One of his many ornaments dug into her palm, but the pain felt miles away, inconsequential compared to the heat flooding through her.  She pressed her other hand against his erection, closing her fingers around the weight of him.  

            Cursing, wide-eyed, Jack tore his mouth away from her and began removing what remained of his clothing.

            Smart girl that she was, she didn't need him to ask her to do the same.

            She'd thought he was beautiful, and she wasn't about to change her mind now that he was unclothed before her.  Covering her own nudity with one of the many lavish covers on his bed, she let her eyes travel the length of his body, the slim hips, the long muscles of his thighs, and she wondered how, precisely, a man got so tanned all over.

            Her wide-eyed assessment was cut short when he tugged the cover away from her, silencing her protests by nipping at her bottom lip with his teeth.  

            "I stopped at thirty-two," he said, lowering his mouth to each of her breasts in turn and stifling a groan as she writhed beneath him.  "But I see now there are just too many to count."  

            She supposed she shouldn't have been surprised he'd be able to talk, even in the midst of something so monumental.  

            "Jack," she gasped desperately, unable to form any other words.  She could feel him pressed against her thigh, but he wasn't moving anything but that ever-busy mouth.  Trying to relieve the heat, knowing what needed to happen, she tried to lever herself up to him.

            "Blasted woman thinks she has to have the run of everything," Jack said, raising his head and looking in her eyes.  "You'll have to trust me on this, love, I know what I'm doing."

            "You're killing me, is what you're doing," she said between gasps, tightening her fingers in his hair and making him wince.

            Sliding one hand gently beneath her head, he lowered his mouth once more.  This time, though, he slid his hand down her slickened body, trailing his fingers over the swell of her hip just before cupping his hand around her and sliding one finger into her heat and over the center of her.

            She surprised him.  Instead of screaming as the tide rolled through her, she arched up and rode through it silently, closing her eyes.  As it crested and ebbed, her eyes burst open and her breath came in great gasps.  

            Already, though, the tension was mounting again.  She kept one hand anchored in his hair and the other fisted in the fabric beneath her, her knuckles white from the strain.

            Jack kept his hand under her head, moving the other to slide possessively down the back of her thigh, lifting it slightly and bending her knee.  "Steady now, love," he whispered, his voice thick.  

            She nodded, her body still moving with the rocking within her.  She nodded, knowing it would hurt some, but more than ready for it.

            He entered her slowly, exercising the self-control he rarely called upon as she closed tightly around him.  He planned on slow, planned on sinuous.

            His plans were cast aside when she started making the little noises that had started driving him mad in the first place, panting gasps and moans that struck straight to the center of his brain.  She moved beneath him even as he tried to stay still, and he was soon lost in the insistent rhythm that seemed to come naturally between them.

            As she crashed for the second time, she formed his name with her lips, nearly inaudible.  Clenching his jaw, Jack looked in the warmed honey eyes and wordlessly let himself go.

~~~

            She should have felt guilty, Amelia reckoned, or at least ashamed.  But she simply felt satisfied, if a bit sinful, as Jack loosed his fingers from her leg and eased himself to her side.  As he withdrew from her, she winced a bit.  Soreness was already starting to set in.

            "Well, then, I'd say it must have been either amazingly amazing or terribly terrible to have silenced Amelia Hamilton so effectively," he said easily, but he'd seen her wince.  Pain enough she'd had already, and though the pain he'd given her was unavoidable, he couldn't help but feel a bit chagrined.

            What was she supposed to say?  That tenderness had been a rarity in her life, that she was grateful?  That she didn't want to move?  "The former," she said quietly.   

            Only a fool could lie next to a beautiful woman without touching her.  Jack propped himself on his elbow, running his hand down the length of her side, from throat to hip.  "You've hardly eaten," he stated.  

            "I'm sorry," she said, unable to keep the bite out of her voice.  "I'll fodder myself, if 'tis your pleasure, then."

            Laughing, he swung both legs over the side of the bed and looked over his shoulder at her.  "It's more my pleasure, milady, to hear you prepare to descend upon me like a pack of screeching Harpies."  Turning his back to her, unabashed in his nudity, he took a flask of water from the small, hewn table in the corner and wet a handkerchief with it.  He'd drawn her blood and didn't intend to leave it marking her.  

            When he turned to hand the cloth to her, however, he stopped.

            Amelia held his book, the only part of Johnny Sparrow left, turning it over in her hands.  

            "I wanted to ask you about this… days ago, after you locked me in here."  She kept her eyes on his, waiting for the anger, the disappointment, but instead he just stared at her, wet handkerchief poised in his hand.  He looked amused, but not surprised.  "I looked through your things," she confessed.  

            "I know," he retorted, crossing to the bed.  "Just a tip from a marauder to a maiden, love, when you sort through a man's things, lest you want him to know, you should be very particular about where you replace things."  He tossed her the rag as he sat on the bed, watching her carefully.  "Though I've a confession of my own, I would have known anyway."  He squinted one eye and tapped on his head.  "I'm terribly clever."  She sat down the book but held the cloth as though unsure of what to do with it.

            "Could you…"  Humiliation coloring her cheeks, she gestured for him to turn around.

            Rolling his eyes, he did as he was asked, grabbing the book as he did so.  It was so easy to hear his father's voice then, to remember opening the brown paper the book had been wrapped in, to feel the "thank you" to his father perched on his lips.

            She was the only one who knew, the only one he'd told, and so as Jack Sparrow held his past in his hands, he prepared to tell the rest of it to the only woman he'd ever watched awaken. 


	16. First look at money

**Author's note: My sincerest apologies if anything in the last chapter seemed amiss.  Much thanks to Braveheart, who pointed out the discrepancies in Amelia's speech; they have been corrected as best I could.  It's hard to write sex scenes and write them tastefully, so I definitely got a little wrapped up in that.  Besides… who among us is focused enough to write about a naked and willing Jack Sparrow without getting the tiniest bit sidetracked?  ;-)  Thanks to the faithful readers and reviewers!!!**

            It wasn't enough, and it would never be enough.

            In the past that existed in memory alone, a thirteen-year-old boy stood on the warped wooden boards of the dock, hands in empty pockets, eyes on the skyline.  In the three years following his father's death, the boy who had once been Johnny Sparrow had done many things. 

            Every fisherman and merchant knew him, knew he was a dependable deckhand, knew of his quick hands and quiet demeanor.  He'd made many trips, traveled to many places.  But it wasn't enough, for the ships always stopped sailing, and they always came back to port. 

            He wanted to sail and never look back. 

            "Psst, boy."  The whisper, snaky and sibilant, nearly blended into the sounds of the water, but he heard it and looked to find its owner.

            A scraggly man, short and stooped like a monkey, his face a map of wrinkles and scars, sat in a small boat bobbing gently between two docked ships.  His graying hair fell in his eyes, and when he swiped it away, the boy could see he was missing several fingers.

            "Aye, boy, 'tis ye I'm talkin' at.  Now, if ye'd just come a mite closer rather'n starin' at me with them black eyes o'yourn, we could do a bit o'business."  The whisper leveled off to a gravelly rasp, and the man beckoned.  As the boy stepped closer, the simian man rubbed his hands together and leaned forward.  "Quick now, what're ye called?"

            The boy thrust his hands into his pockets, his mind working to decide whether or not to hear the man out.  

            "Jack," he said quietly.  "I'm called Jack."

~~~

            The monkey-like man was Haversham, and he was in need of someone with fast hands and watchful eyes.  More than anything, however, he was in need of someone who could keep a secret.

            "Isn't for me, though, it's for me cap'n.  Ye'll like him, I'd swear to it."  Rowing the small boat farther into the harbor, Haversham kept throwing glances over his shoulder at the town behind them.  "Have ye family up there, boy?"

            Jack didn't look back, only sat his arms on his updrawn knees and shook his head.  "No.  No, sir."  

            Haversham's eyes widened, stretching out some wrinkles and creating new ones.  "Sir, is it?  Nay, boy, save yer 'sirs' for Cap'n Cameron."  He pointed up as he stopped rowing, and Jack's eyes followed the pointing finger up, up, and up, to the enormous sails and unimaginable bulk of a ship.

            "Did ye find me a boy-o, then, Haversham?  Best be a good'n, now, as the last one ye found was too pretty to be smart and too sissy to be of any service."  The voice boomed down to them, making Jack wince, and an enormous head covered in shaggy red hair soon followed, poking out over the side of the ship and looking down with curiosity.

            Haversham grinned, showing gaps where several teeth had surely once been.  "Jack, meet Cap'n Cameron."

            It seemed as though everything went into a whirl of motion, with Haversham pushing and prodding him onto the ship, leading him past hoards of staring, filthy men.

            "I'm not quite certain this is the place for me," he said to Haversham, trying to keep his voice down.  But he could feel the wind blowing the hair that had grown overlong, and from the condition of the men on the ship, he knew it didn't stop often.

            This was a ship that never stopped moving.

            He found his hand engulfed by one roughly the size of his head and pumped up and down vigorously.

            "Welcome, boy-o, to the ship."  The captain was a giant of a man, large in body, in speech, and in spirit.  "Ye like her, then?  I likes to call her the Blarney Stern."  He laughed then, releasing Jack and crossing to the bow of the boat where a bust was tied as a makeshift masthead.

            To Jack's amazement, the captain grasped the bust between both of his hands, leaned down, and gave it a rousing kiss on the lips.

            "St. Patrick, it is.  Lovely man.  Patron saint of thieves and liars."  He hunkered down and raised his eyes heavenward, sketching a quick sign of the cross.

            "That's actually untrue," Jack said, unable to help himself.  Once the words had left his mouth, he flinched as though expecting a blow.  

            The captain laid a hand on his shoulder, a large grin displaying large teeth.  "Why, no 'tisn't.  The patron saint of Ireland, he is, and by that, it makes him the patron saint of liars, to be sure."

            Jack's grin was quick, and gone as quickly as it came.  "Aye," he said simply, trying to be braver than he was.  "What purpose did you have for me?"

            As Ian Cameron began laying out his plans, Jack felt his heart rate double, then treble.  He was aboard a pirate ship, a thing he'd held in the back of his mind as more legend than truth.  

            "I need ye to be a pair of eyes for me, Jack.  Stay close to my lovey here—" he paused to stroke the deck reverently—"And make sure no one tries to board her or take her while we… make some acquaintances in town."

            Thinking of a pompous man with a fat, pompous son, thinking of his father lying dead at the hands of a rich redcoat, Jack nodded slowly.  

            "I'll be your eyes, sir," he agreed, already thinking ahead.  

            It seemed to Jack that even someone so insignificant as a boy would get some reward for his pains.

~~~

            No one tried to board the Blarney Stern or take her when she came to the shore that night.  In fact, the town seemed quiet as the minutes and hours ticked by.  Only when Jack saw the bulk of Captain Cameron barreling down the street toward him did the noise begin, gunshots and shouts, breaking glass and cries like those of a warrior, all seeming to flow out from behind the man.  

            "Back on the ship, Jack me boy, fine job ye did."  And so saying, the captain climbed the gangplanks without so much as a glance back at the mayhem rising behind him, catching an awestricken Jack by the collar and dragging him along.

            As the crew began to reassemble, some sporting bruises and scrapes they hadn't previously had, Jack noted with wide eyes and sweaty palms the sacks of things being dumped on deck, the jewels and gold and bottles being thrown in by each man as he arrived.  

            "Out," the captain commanded tersely, verbosity suddenly gone.  "Pull up anchor and go."  He stepped over the piles of things on the deck as though they were just debris and oversaw the progress of his deckhands, the escape of his ship.  With bright eyes, he glanced at Jack.  "Well, then, if it's leavin' ye're wantin', now's the time to do it.  In the snap of yer fingers we'll be gone from this place and it's out to sea ye'll be, stuck with us rogues."

            "It's staying I'm wanting, sir, if that's agreeable to you."  It was hard for Jack to pull his eyes away from the piles on the ground.  It looked, to his mind, much like an offering to a god must have looked.

            Haversham scampered to the captain's side, his eyes gleaming.  With his mangled hand, he tapped on Jack's head roughly and laughed.  "Sounds like a learn-ed man, don't he, cap'n?"  The captain nodded, a strange smile on his face, and Haversham cackled again.  "Our very own lil' So-crates."  

            "Socrates," Jack corrected the man's pronunciation, but no one seemed to hear.

            "Haversham's clinker for the night, boys, gather 'round."  Captain Cameron looked down at the newest and youngest member of his crew and nodded.  "You too, boy-o."

            Haversham doled out gold and jewels evenly among the men, passing over Jack as he did so.  Only toward the end did he give attention to Jack, his hand hovering over the last pile on the floor.  "Got the perfect thing for ye, So-crates."  So saying, he grabbed a cloth-bound book and tossed it to Jack, who immediately looked at the title.

            _The Gods and Goddesses of Ancient __Rome__.___

~~~

            Pausing in his story, in the memory of the first raid he'd taken part in, Jack looked at the book now laying open on his stomach.  "And thus began the education of Jack Sparrow.  The first lesson I learned was you could find out a great deal simply by pretending you knew nothing.  And by pretending to know nothing—something I'm very good at, by the way—I heard many things."  

            Amelia had dressed before he'd started to speak.  Sitting on the edge of her cot, hands clasped in her lap, she felt the distance of years between them, the distance of experiences and circumstances, and not for the first time, felt she'd made a terrible mistake.  

            He sat up then, slapping the book shut.  "When what I heard was that they'd killed both Wallaces, elder and younger, all I felt was glee, savage and true."  He rolled his eyes so he was looking askew at her.  "So you see, love, 'twas a pirate's life for me from the very beginning.  When I told you I was born as I am, I was telling you the honest truth."

            She said nothing, thinking about his words and thinking about what had passed between them earlier.  He'd protested—something she'd never have expected from him—and she'd insisted anyway, selfishly, and what was worse, _commonly.  _  He'd shown himself as more than a pirate, and she'd refused to accept it.

            Because she said nothing, he let himself think the worst, letting his guilt steep in her rare silence.  He'd known the consequences of his actions, but he was becoming increasingly certain she hadn't fully thought out her end of the situation, and his guilt made him increasingly certain that she condemned him with every silent moment that passed.  If she wanted to hate him for it, then she'd not be the first.  If she slapped him for it, then he'd be back on a road he'd traveled endlessly.  At least he knew the curves of that road, where it was easy to stay ahead.

            "Perhaps," he said languorously, standing and snatching his pants from the floor, "You were correct in the first place when you called me the devil."  Sliding into his clothes easily, he looked over his shoulder at her as he walked out the door.  "Mayhap now ye've worked up enough of an appetite to eat something today, then, love."


	17. The lust for love

            Two dark heads bent over the same table, as though conspiring to do evil, one speaking in halting, dulcet tones, the other appearing to listen intently.  

            "'Thou, when thou return'st, wilt tell me all strange wonders that befell thee, and swear no where lives a woman true, and fair.'"  Anamaria glanced up at her tutor as though for approval, and added quietly, "That be a lie.  I've met a woman true and fair."

            Amelia looked at the pirate sharply.  "That's not part of the poem, Anamaria."  Taking the book from her charge, she shut it gently.  "Excellent job on the existing text, however.  I hardly think you needed my assistance at all."

            Anamaria drummed her fingers on the table, impatient with the unspoken words humming in the air, the thick atmosphere that had settled over the ship, and in particular, the captain and his stowaway.  "So what is it yer goin' to do now?  Now that ye've finished yer end of the deal with the cap'n?"  

            Amelia rubbed at her eyes, trying to stem the tears that had been just below the surface all day.  She had, as the saying went, jumped from the pan and into the fire.  She'd been too stupid to see that danger came in many forms, and a bruised heart was perhaps more dangerous than a bruised body.  

            She knew there were women who would lament their reputation at such a time, who would bewail the loss of innocence or the scandal that accompanied the actions she'd provoked.  But she had no care for that, no care for the thoughts of people she had yet to meet and yet to know.

            She had care for the thoughts of a particular man.

            "Now that I've upheld my end of the agreement, Anamaria, I suppose the captain will inform me when it would be expedient for me to leave."  The early morning lovemaking seemed years away, but the feel of his hands seemed only seconds past.  And Anamaria, the only other woman on the ship, had a very valid point.

            It was quite time for Amelia to go.

            "'Tisn't daft I am, high-nose.  If ye thinks I can't see what's happened, it's crazy y'are.  Ye don't want t'leave any more than I wanted to read, missy."  Anaramia crossed her arms, an arch look dignifying her exotic features.  She was rewarded with Amelia's reaction, the color first dropping sharply from her face then returning in excess, the blood staining her cheeks. 

            "We're finished here.  You may have loan of the Donne book until I leave, Anamaria."  Amelia stood, closing her eyes against the roiling nausea that threatened her.  "I've tolerated your company more than I thought I could have."

            "Same to ye," Anamaria said, tracing her hands over the cover of the book and looking at the woman before her, a sad compatriot, one of Jack Sparrow's lost women.

            Anaramia had some questions to ask the captain.

~~~  
            Though it shamed her that Jack was right, she'd been famished for the first time since boarding the ship.  

            Amelia had eaten slowly, lending herself the courage to do what had to be done, picking over every word in her mind, every phrase, trying to anticipate any resistance he might give her.

            She didn't think he'd give her any.  After the way she'd acted, he probably wanted her off the ship more than she wanted off herself.

            She approached his cabin slowly, counting the steps it took her to get from the mess table to the quarterdeck, and then the steps it took to get to his cabin.  She stopped approximately four steps short at the sound of voices.

            "Though you have my absolute trust, Gibbs, I'm reluctant to leave the ship.  However, a man has certain needs, and needs, by definition, are a necessity.  There's a particular necessity I'm after."  Amelia stepped just far enough to see Jack's hands, drumming on the small table in the corner, rings flashing and winking with the light.  Every so often a hand would stop and float listlessly in the air, punctuating a sentence.  

            "Aye, we all know about ye and yer needs, cap'n," Gibbs chortled, ending in a cough.  "Though it sounds like to me it's nothing you can't get from the missy."

            "What I can get from Amelia has no novelty."

            Amelia pressed the back of her hand to her mouth, stifling the cry that wanted to come.  She'd felt pity for this man, and the things he was saying now were making her sick.  She watched the restless fingers on the scarred surface of the wood and felt bile rise in her throat.  

            She tried desperately to identify the feelings inside her as revulsion, as anger, as anything other than despair and jealousy, but failed miserably.  Squeezing her eyes shut, Amelia continued to listen, determined to hear the sordid conversation out to its end.  

            She had acted as she wanted; she would take the consequences as they came.  Faust had paid a severe price for his transgressions, she reminded herself.  Surely a little hurt wouldn't be nearly as bad as suffering eternal damnation.  But at the moment, she felt as though hellfire would be a welcome mercy.

            "I want you to take the ship only close enough to shore for a boat to reach.  I do not want to make port, I only want you to drop anchor for little more than an hour.  It's really quite imperative that you not come closer to shore, or else the missy, as you call her, will leave the ship before you can draw a pistol."  He stood then, making Amelia gasp and draw further away from the door.  "That'll be all, Gibbs.  If the men ask where I am, tell them I've a bit of business to conduct on land."  She could hear the grin in his voice.  "I'm a trig businessman, aye?"

            Gathering her skirts, Amelia turned and fled before he could see her.  She'd rather be hanged than show him any more of her tears.

~~~

            He'd kept to himself since the captain had threatened him, slinking low around the ship like a frequently punished dog, his eyes bright and watchful, wary and waiting.  All Daniel reckoned he needed was proper opportunity.  On a ship filled to the gills with liars and thieves, Daniel figured opportunities presented themselves fairly often. 

            He would get what he deserved, one way or another.  There was no end to the list of things the filthy young man thought he deserved.  Money, women, his own ship.  

            If a blowhard Mary such as Jack Sparrow—Daniel called the captain 'Jacqueline' in his own head—could captain a ship, surely it couldn't be terribly hard.  And there had been rumors, he recalled, of a mutiny years ago, of a time when Jack Sparrow had lost his own ship to a man with the right idea, a man who knew who was truly deserving in life.

            Sharpening his aged sword repeatedly, Daniel Carrington watched.  And waited.

            Not far away, slipping through the waters with a recklessness only one crazed would risk, was a small ship, hardly more than a boat, captained by a man who also watched.  By his estimation, he'd waited long enough, what was his had been away from him for far too long.  In a ship Amelia had forgotten stood a man she'd tried hard to forget.

            Blood was thicker than water, as Taletha Hamilton had told her beloved son repeatedly.

            Philip Hamilton thought his sister's blood, and that of the thieving bastard that had taken her, would be a great deal thicker than the waters he navigated.  


	18. Money for love

**Author's note: I ordinarily update more often, but with the shaky status of fanfiction.net these last few days, I've been unable.  The chapter that follows is not what I consider my best, but it's transitioning… it's getting me somewhere.  So bear with me, readers, as I'm heading someplace.  Thanks for all the reviews and encouragement… happy reading, mates!**

            He shouldn't have been surprised.  After all, Jack hadn't had a moment's peace since Amelia Hamilton had worked her way onto the Black Pearl, so a little more unrest was unpredictable.

            Unrest was a mild word, though, for some situations.  Lounging at the wheel of the ship, his eyes cast to the approaching body of land before him, Jack didn't see or hear Anamaria's approach until she was upon him, her hand laying a bright red imprint on his cheek.

            Widening his eyes and working his fingers over his jaw, Jack rounded on the small woman.  "What in the bloody hell was that for?  I feel I should inform you, common sense dictates a limit on how many times a man can be slapped for one transgression."

            Her arms akimbo, Anamaria stood toe-to-toe with the captain, not bothering to show any of the respect she knew he expected.  "What did you do?" she asked sharply, pushing her face into his.

            "Most currently, love, or are we looking for a specific moment in time for which I am to answer for?"  But as he worked his sore jaw back and forth, he knew what he had to answer for.

            Blowing out an impatient breath, Anamaria poked a finger into his chest.  "It's in over yer head ye've gotten this time, with the miss walkin' around here lookin' dragged.  She isn't one of yer pay-by-night ladies, and she's not a penniless Negress lookin' fer a man to teach her to sail."  

            Though the reference wasn't lost on Jack, he rubbed his jaw thoughtfully.  "Well, then, I can't express to you how glad I am we cleared that up, Anamaria."  He turned his attention back to the water.  "Do us a favor, love, and ready an anchor for me."

            "Oh, all my pardons, Cap'n," she responded in a voice too syrupy to be genuine.  "Did ye finally find one who made ye feel foolish before you could do the same to her?"  She blinked innocently as he turned, his eyes fiery.

            "Excellent," he said, tugging his hat down tighter on his head.  "I'll prepare the anchor meself."  

~~~

            Those constantly in fear learn to be quiet, to escape notice, to pass by without attracting attention.  So skilled had Amelia become at blending in that she, even as a woman on a ship full of men, was able to engineer her own departure without attracting widespread attention.  With most of the crew at dinner and Jack on his way to shore, it was easy to become invisible.

            Of course, even experts needed help.

            "Are you certain about this?"  Amelia eyed the small boat with a healthy amount of fear.  "I'm fairly certain this will capsize, and it will be difficult for me to follow your beloved captain if it's at the bottom of the ocean I am."  Jack had left only minutes before, his quick, clean strokes carrying him to shore quickly.  

            Anamaria shook her head.  "Beloved he's not, and it'll hold ye just fine."  She stood portside of the Pearl, and after several minutes stood watching the high-nose row awkwardly toward the shore.  It had been a long time since Anamaria had taken the right road, done the right thing, and the feeling of it was foreign to her.  As independent as she liked to think she was, she knew she was one of Jack Sparrow's lost girls, one of the trail he inevitably left lying behind him.  The time for regret had come and gone, and now all Anamaria regretted was that she wouldn't be there to see the captain meet his match. 

            She watched her mentor until she was out of the shadow of the Pearl before going to take her post in the nest.  As long as she was posted at watch, no one else would see the girl come and go.  Before she could turn and cross the deck of the ship, a single hard blow to the back of her head sent her sprawling unconscious on the deck, leaving the ship without watch and Amelia without protection.

            Daniel Covington stood over Anamaria's still form, a smile crooking his thin lips.  "Aye… y'never know when opportunity might arise, ye meddling shrew," he whispered, stepping over her and looking portside, where a single boat slowly made its way to shore.

~~~

            Jack stood in the darkened doorway of the unnamed establishment, a smile playing over his lips.  It had been too long, indeed, since he'd come to a place like this.  Even the strongest of men had weaknesses they could only go so long without.  

            "If that's Jack, ye filthy bastard, ye still owe me from last time.  Ye'll not be getting' a single thing from me, ye bloody thief."  The voice floated from the interior of the small, dusty front room, the cultured voice ill-suited to the salty slang.

            Jack grinned, swaggering farther in.  "Have a heart, Yancey.  I've plenty to cover last time, as well as my pleasures for this day."  His eyes adjusting to the gloom, he saw the tall, thin man sitting in a chair in the corner.  "I'll have two of whatever's most current, mate, as thick as you have 'em."  

            Yancey laughed then, unfolding his long frame to stand and cross to a man he'd once sailed with.  It had been long years since Peter Yancey had walked the deck of a ship or answered to the big Irish captain they'd both admired, but the camaraderie was timeless.  "I seems to remember ye always liked 'em as thick as ye could get 'em, Jack-my-boy."  He laid a hand to Jack's shoulder, his old eyes twinkling.  "Incidentally, I've two lovelies I've been holding just for you."

~~~

            A moist wind whipped through the streets, carrying the smell of the water with it, and Amelia suddenly felt as though the last month had not happened at all.  Back in the streets, she was, following a man up to unsavory business in an unsavory part of town.

            Only this time, she had no fear of the man she tailed, only a tight, compressed ball of sick jealousy and anger in her stomach.  

            _'Tisn't any of your concern what he does in port, she told herself as she stayed well behind the weaving, brightly-clad captain.  The staggering walk no longer seemed strange to her, but she saw the glances from other people in the street._

            She hadn't a clue what she would say to him when he finally reached his destination, when she finally caught up to him.  It wasn't her right to chastise him, nor did she particularly want to.  She'd known from the beginning what sort of man he was, and to pretend otherwise would not only be foolish, but unfair. 

            It was only that the thought of him cozied up with some faceless strumpet made her absolutely ill.    
            _What I can get from Amelia has no novelty._

Clenching her jaw, she tried to banish the lilting, slurring voice from her memory.  She'd pitied the bastard, she had, and cursed herself for treating him as less than he was.  She'd not make the mistake again, she warranted.  She'd not underestimate him as so many others had.  

            'Twasn't a bookish man she was after, not a scholar or a gentleman, but a pirate.  He had no apologies for being such, and she expected none of him.

            In that case, Amelia thought as she watched him enter a building facing the street, she'd offer no apologies for being what she was: a very confused, very angry, and very irrationally jealous woman.


	19. Loves to hear himself talk

**Author's note: It was pointed out in a review that Captain Cameron would have been of Scottish extraction rather than Irish; I was thinking of a Scottish father and an Irish mother.  Just an F.Y.I. ;-)  Happy reading!**

            Indecisiveness was not a trait Amelia admired in anyone, much less herself, so as she stood only feet away from the doorway she'd watched Jack enter, she didn't bother taking the time to hash over consequences or outcomes.  She followed.

            Though the light outside was growing scarcer by the second, there was no light to speak of when she stepped inside.  Blinking furiously to regain her bearings, Amelia held her breath, trying to hear in absence of sight.  She heard voices, low and laughing, from somewhere in front of her, muffled by a wall or door.  Blowing out her breath slowly, she closed her eyes and counted to ten, helping her eyes adjust.  When she opened them again, she could see a bit more.  A chair stood directly in front of her, and what appeared to be more than four floor-to-ceiling walls bisected the room in several places.  She reached out a hand, still listening for the voices, and touched one of the strange walls.

            A wall it wasn't, she realized with a gasp, but a bookshelf.  Every wall she'd seen was a bookshelf, crammed from side to side and top to bottom with books and pamphlets.  Forgetting her purpose for a moment, she walked down one shelf and turned to look at another and another and another, her eyes straining to read the titles on the well-organized books.

            Hearing the voices—one the distinct slur she'd grown to enjoy and the other a dry, foppish voice—grow nearer, Amelia turned to escape, hide, anything.  Amidst the dark myriad shelves, however, she couldn't figure out from which way she'd come.

            "Damnation," she mouthed, keeping herself silent as she picked her way slowly shelf by shelf.  She was finding her way out, she was certain, but she was also drawing nearer to Jack and his companion.

            "Well, the distraction was certainly worth the small detour I had to take," Jack said, and the sound of coins clinking reached Amelia's ears.  "I trust that takes care of my debt from last time and the multiple beauties you lavished upon me today."

            She narrowed her eyes, pausing at a junction of shelves.  _Done already? _she thought, her nose wrinkling.  A feminine satisfaction followed, a catty thought all but purred in her mind.  _Well, he certainly wasn't that quick to be finished with me.  _

            "That takes care of it at least twice over, Jack.  'Tis good y'are to yer old shipmate."  

            Jack laughed then, the sound turning its way through the bookshelves and distorting with each bounce.  "It's hard for a man to find a good discreet book-dealer these days, Yancey.  A discreet abbess is easy to find, but keep me in books and you have my business for life."

            "However long that may be," Yancey said, his laughter joining Jack's in the stacks.

            A slow, sick realization crept upon Amelia.  "Books?" she said aloud, forgetting herself.  'Twas books he'd been speaking of?

            At the new voice, small and feminine, Jack drew his pistol and stepped directly into the shelves, turning without error until he came face-to-face with the speaker.

            "Amelia?"  He leaned forward, all but nose-to-nose with her to be sure it was her.

            "Books?" she repeated dumbly, staring at the volumes in his arms.  

            "I'm in hell," he said decisively, nodding curtly as he grabbed her arm and led her out of the shelves and toward the door.  "Yancey, this is Amelia, the bane of my existence.  Amelia, meet Yancey, whom you'll never meet again and absolutely shouldn't have met this time, he's a long acquaintance, old friend, tra-la-la, we'll be on our way now, Yancey, and I'll be depositing this poor, lost girl back at the orphanage where I found her, good day!"

            Long past being surprised at any action of Jack Sparrow's, Peter Yancey settled himself back into the chair in the corner and closed his eyes with a smile.  Even some land-bound days were interesting.

"You know, though I feel somewhat obligated to ask you what you are doing here, I've quite decided I don't care."  Jack weaved through the streets without hesitation, dragging Amelia along in his wake.

            "I thought… I thought you were doing something else."  She felt like a bloody fool, was what she felt like.  It seemed everything she did in regard to this man was wrong, and she was starting to decide there was no "right" with a man like Jack Sparrow, there was only what you felt like doing and didn't feel like doing.

            Right now, she felt like killing the both of them, him and herself.

            "You know, love, have you ever given thought to the thought that perhaps you think entirely too much?  Because that's what I think."  Letting go of her hand and tugging a book from under his arm, he tossed it to her, not looking back to see if she caught it.  "There y'are, love, that one was positively written for you.  It should be subtitled 'The Story of Amelia Hamilton.'"

            _The Taming of the Shrew.  _"I warrant you think you're clever," she said through grated teeth, but she held the book close to her as she ran to keep up.

            "Ah-ah, beau'iful, we've a bit o' business to attend to."  The voice snaked into her left ear as an arm wound around her waist and brought her to a halt.  "'Ey, Cap'n.  It looks like I finally got what I deserves."  Daniel Carrington brought his face close to Amelia's and grinned.  "'Ow's it goin', lovey?"

            Amelia didn't scream and didn't struggle.  She knew the sound of a man who liked a struggle, and so she kept perfectly still.

            Jack turned, already having recognized the voice.  He thought quickly as he moved slowly, knowing that Amelia would most likely be harmed if he drew a weapon now.  He held his hands in the air, looking at his crewman jovially.  "Hello, Danny.  It looks like ye've taken a bit of trouble off my hands for me.  Best, really, as she's too much for me to deal with."

            "Ye're both no smarter'n a pair of fishes, if y'think no one would notice ye both missin' from the ship.  And y'know, if 'twere that ye went missin' on yer little leave, the ship'd leave without ye.  Too bad."  He spat on the ground and brought red-rimmed eyes back to Jack's.  "Even an idiot could figure out ye'd gone."

            Amused, Jack crossed his arms over his chest and cocked an eyebrow at Daniel.  "Though I'm disinclined to disagree, I wonder if you realize you more or less just declared yourself an idiot, Daniel?"  

            With a growl, Daniel propelled himself forward by a few steps, thrusting Amelia forward into Jack in an attempt to knock the captain off balance.  Jack caught her by reflex, his eyes staring into hers for a brief moment before he turned his attention back to Daniel.  

            Amelia saw his eyes widen and his hand reach for his pistol.  Gripping the book with both hands, she pivoted and raised it above her head just as Daniel's sword thumped into the cover.  It took no more hesitation than that for Jack to have his pistol out and at the ready.  Looking Daniel straight in the eye, he lowered his arm and sent the round directly into the mutineer's leg. 

            Even as Daniel fell, Jack was walking toward Yancey's door.  "'Ey, Peter," he called, stepping on and over Daniel as though he were part of the sidewalk.  "There's a bit of trash on your sidewalk out here, and he just so happens to be a known pirate.  Can I trust you to turn him over to a bit o' red for me?" 

            Yancey appeared in the doorway like a specter and regarded the man lying screaming on the sidewalk with distaste.  He heaved a large sigh and nodded.  "I s'pose y'can, Jacky.  Best you get on now."  Reaching into his ragged vest, he drew out a gun, emptied the ammunition, and tossed it to Jack.

            Jack dropped the gun on Daniel's chest as he turned and looked at Amelia.  She stood looking at Daniel, her fingers tracing and retracing the groove his sword had cut into the Shakespeare.  Passers-by were beginning to stop and look at the man bleeding on the sidewalk, and so Jack did what he was unequalled at. 

            He turned on the charm.

            "'Ello, everyone.  Don't mind my friend 'ere, e's had a bit of an accident, nothing what can't be remedied by a few days' rest, aye?  Clumsy sort of lad 'e is, shot himself in the leg."  Winking at a matronly woman who was trying to be covert in her nosiness, Jack spread his hands.  "Move along, ye don't want him to be more embarrassed now, do ye?"

            "What has occurred here?"  The crowd parted as a man's voice rose over the din, the self-important voice of a man who obviously likes to hear himself talk.

            But no one liked to hear themselves more than Jack Sparrow.  "Bloody good thing you arrived, sir, as this man just shot 'imself!  Poor oafish bastard.  Bit o' the barrel fever methinks he's got, the pitiable bull calf.  He'd drunk as an emperor," Jack exclaimed, then leaned down and yelled in Daniel's face as though the man were deaf.  "Aren't ye, ye big dull-swift?"

            The yelling was all it took for the soldier to take action.  "Sir," he said coldly, eyeing first Amelia then Jack.  "If you and your wife could please move aside.  As… detailed… as your account of the matter seems to be, I think you've told me all I need to know.  Now move along and let me take care of this man."

            Jack kept his eyes wide as he nodded enthusiastically.  "Right, then, I'd hate to be interferin' with your duties and all.  'Tis an important job you have."  He reached out his hand as though to shake the soldier's, then whipped it back when the man reluctantly reached for it.  "No, no, mustn't keep you any longer, sorry, beg your pardon."  Turning his back to the now-bewildered soldier, he slipped his arm through Amelia's and began walking down the street, his steps so large it looked as though they were marching.  

            The last thing she should have felt like doing was laughing, but Amelia found herself stifling an outburst as they all but ran down the street.  "I shouldn't laugh," she finally said.  "Jack, we could have been in such a mess.  I'm sorry."  She stopped them, grabbing his arm.  "I am, you know.  Sorry."

            Embarrassed by the apology and eager to see what had happened aboard the Pearl, Jack flapped a hand in a dismissive gesture.  "Go on, love, it's no matter 'tall."  

            But he didn't say another word as they traveled back to the docks, lashed their boats together, and headed back to the Pearl.


	20. A man in search of his money

            He'd have been amused, had he not been so worried about the state of his ship.  She'd come ashore and hadn't even realized what it meant—that she'd worked off her end of the bargain, and that she'd gained the passage she'd so desperately begged for.

            "Well, that's just positively uplifting," he exclaimed as they neared the ship.  "Look alive, love, it looks as though we've visitors aboard the Pearl."

            She'd been thinking of other things, of a morning spent in his arms, of seeing a man try to kill him, of her own persistent idiocy.  Most of all, she thought of how she'd come aboard the Pearl in an attempt to escape, and now she had no place else she truly wanted to be.

            At Jack's words, she looked up and saw the small craft bobbing next to the Pearl.  The single word flew from her mouth without thought, without intent.

            "Da!"  She scrambled to her feet, making both the boat and her stomach lurch.

            "I beg your pardon?"  Jack steadied the boat and grasped a hand to her shoulder, none too gentle.  He had a sudden, clear picture of a very large and very angry man coming to avenge his daughter's virtue.  "I thought you said your father was dead."  He couldn't keep the hopeful note from his voice.

            Amelia shook her head, rubbing her hand over her face.  Her skin had dropped to an ashen tone, her eyes wide and suddenly unfathomable.  "He is," she said hollowly.  "That ship—it's the Larksong.  'Twas my father's, and I—"  _I__ had forgotten all about it, she finished in her mind.  "Philip's followed us."_

            Jack looked critically at the ship—it was nearly too small to be called such.  "If what yer tellin' me, love, is that the huge, ungainly, and horrible-smelling man I had the ill-fortune to encounter just before we left has followed us, I have to admit I will not be charmed or pleased or happy in any general sort of way."

            "Yes," she said woodenly.  "That's precisely what I'm telling you, Jack."

            They were alongside the Pearl in a matter of strokes, Jack already keeping himself between Amelia and the ship.  "Stay here," he said, though he knew the odds of her actually obeying him were slim.  The last time he'd told someone to stay put, he'd been coshed in the back of the head with an oar.  

            He started to climb up, stopped by a small hand wrapped in the cloth of his pants.  

            "'Tis my fault," Amelia said, her eyes large and earnest.  "I'll not stay here and leave you to deal with something I've brought upon you."

            He stared at her for long moments, not saying anything, studying her intently.  "You didn't bring him upon yourself; he did that, love, and you'd do well to remember it.  It was my decision to keep you aboard, and my decision to keep you abed."  He turned his back to her, rolling his eyes heavenward.  "But if you're coming, come quietly."

~~~

            "Yoo… hoo…"  Philip took one shaky step after another, covering foot by foot of the deck, turning his large head this way and that to try and catch a glimpse of his sister.  "Come on, Amelia, y'aren't any catch at hiding games, y'know."  He giggled madly, clutching his hand to his chest.  

            His hand had gotten progressively worse.  He'd had to pay a boy to help him ready the small, rotting craft his father had left behind, but he'd gotten his money back easily enough.  It had hardly been a challenge, a small lad like that.  

            After one day out to sea, red streaks had begun to crawl up his arm, a deep-seated itching crawling up and down his arm.  Lubricating the arm—and his throat—with liberal amounts of gin seemed to keep it quiet.

            But then the fever had set, making a man who was already teetering completely mad.  The vague idea he'd started out with that Amelia was technically his possession careened into full-blown obsession, and he became increasingly sure that she was selling her body and keeping the profits—his by right—for herself.

            So he crept along the ship, not bothering to keep an ear out for other people, his mind intent on Amelia and the bastard conveyancer who'd taken her.  

~~~

            The men were just breaking from their meal when Jack landed feet back on the boards of his ship.  Gibbs came up first, his flask already halfway to his mouth when Jack grasped his arm.  "Do me a bit of a favor, Gibbs, cast your eyes to the north there and tell me what, exactly, you see."  

            Gibbs's hand quivered on his flask as he did as he was asked.  "Oh, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph," he moaned.  "No one called up, Cap'n, no one raised a shout 'tall!"

            Amelia stepped forward, shouldering Jack out of the way and making Gibbs raise his eyebrows.  "Who was on watch tonight, Master Gibbs?"  As the man scratched his chin and tried to think, Amelia gathered her skirts and looked at Jack pleadingly.  "'Twas Anamaria," she said, already off on a run, lurching across the ever-moving ship.

            "Search the ship, Gibbs, yer lookin' for a man who's more bulk than brains, savvy?"  Raising his eyebrow, he nodded at Gibbs's flask.  "He likely smells of alcohol.  Surely you can scent that easily enough."  Dropping his books on the deck and knowing no one would disturb them, Jack followed her, more suited to the rolling motion of the ship and reaching the fallen crewwoman's side before Amelia did.

            "Damnation," Amelia grated out as she stumbled to a halt.  Snatching the tricorne from Jack's head, she began to fan Anamaria with it, completely missing the gape Jack was giving her.

            The bloody shrew had taken his hat.  His hat, of all things.  Scowling and keeping a ready ear out for anyone approaching, Jack whipped the cloth from his hair and rolled it into a loose whip of sorts.  Feeling a sense of symmetry at the situation, he slapped Anamaria in the face with it.

            "Jack!" Amelia stopped fanning and stared disbelievingly.

            "Save the sermon for another time, love, I've a question or two for the lass here."  He was preparing to use the bandana again when Anamaria's eyes snapped open.

            "Ye hit me with that thing, you mangy dog, and it'll be the last thing ye do," she said, wincing as she raised a hand to her head.  "'Tis more times than necessary I've been hit today."

            "Who did it?" Jack said, suddenly curt.  

            Anamaria sat up, shaking her head.  "Didn't see," she responded, raising her eyes to Amelia's.  "But I see ye found 'im," she addressed the woman, nodding.  "Good."

            Jack stood and strode away, his gun already weighting one hand and his other hand playing on the hilt of his sword.  

            His men swarmed around him, searching each of the ship's three decks, looking around every corner and in every space.  Jack walked slowly, his eyes catching every detail, noting the placement of everything on the ship.  It would have been one thing had it only been an intruder, but the idea of this particular man—the one who had driven Amelia to such lengths in the first place—made the idea of a hunt particularly satisfying.  The door to his cabin, cracked slightly, caught his eye, and a predatory grin spread over his lips.

            "Someone's done something stupid," he sing-songed under his breath, and swung the door open wide.   


	21. One man's money and another's love

**Author's note: I thank you all for the wonderful reviews, the support and the encouragement are really more than I expected.  This story has, to date, gotten over twice as many reviews as any of my other stories, and probably twice as many as my other stories combined.  As I'm a writer and not a mathematician, though, I'll let that be.  I fear the story is winding its way down… (dodges possible flames).  But we'll see… Happy reading.**

            He'd looked through everything and still hadn't found her.  But he knew the sneaking wench was aboard somewhere.  He'd found her dress, the rump-loose whore, lying on the floor in a heap with one of the dratted books she insisted on packing about everywhere.  He stood in the middle of the ransacked cabin, rocking to and fro on the balls of his feet, his hooded eyes shifting rapidly from left to right and back again.    

            She had to be around somewhere.

            When the door swung open, he stood where he was for a moment, mesmerized by his own rhythmic movement.  In the open door stood the bastard who'd taken her—the one who'd coshed him on the head.  "Well, ho there, ye high talkin' thief."  Grinning nastily, he leaned forward at the waist in a brawler's stance.

            Jack found himself completely unable to banter, the wit he ordinarily called upon dried up in the face of this man.  In its place was an anger he hadn't felt since his ship had been stolen, and before that, his father.  

            "It seems to me ye have somethin' of mine," Philip insisted, stepping on Amelia's book as he crossed to Jack.  "But I have a deal to make, y'ken?"  He rubbed the intact fingers of his left hand together as though feeling a coin, and his eyes glinted with the combination of fever and greed.  "It seems to me if ye've been lyin' with my no-good, bitch cur of a sister, we'd be just about even if ye'd pay me what she's worth, and I'll let ye keep her."

            "What she's worth?"  Jack walked around the man in a half-circle, pleased and not surprised to see that the oaf was moving slowly, his steps sluggish and his eyes unfocused.  It would take half-nothing to have the man finished, and finished was what he should have been years before.  

            If he did nothing else right in his life, Jack knew he'd do this one thing right.

            "She be worth a lot, if you've kept her aboard this long," Philip snickered nastily.  His face clouded suddenly, as it had on the docks days before when Amelia had spoken of their mother.  "It's disrespectin', you are!" he shouted suddenly, lunging at Jack unexpectedly.  "Disrespectin' my family, and everythin' my poor mother worked to raise us for!"  Jack didn't draw either of his weapons, but stood still as the man slung a clumsy arm about his neck, bringing himself closer to the calm and angry pirate.

            _Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, Jack thought, eyeing the dagger he'd stuck in the wall.  It was perfect for close work, and Jack wanted no mistakes. _

            Jack never wanted this man to lay a hand on Amelia again, even if it meant the same for Jack himself.

~~~

            Amelia sat with Anamaria, trying to make sense of the events as best she could.  Though they were puzzling out between the two of them that it had likely been Daniel who'd hit her, the answers weren't enough for Amelia.  She glanced over her shoulder periodically, watching the men search, and wondered where Philip was.

            She felt guilty, but not at all sad, when she thought perhaps he'd gone ahead and drowned.  There would be justice in that, she thought.  For him to die in the manner of the rest of her family.  To die in the manner of the mother who'd shaped him so cruelly into her own image.  

            Uneasy, she turned back to Anamaria to check on the small amount of blood still trickling from the woman's head.  Amelia opened her mouth to speak, to say something soothing, something friendly to the woman who had somehow, in the common ground of Jack's ingénues, become her friend, but the shouts made her freeze.

            "It's disrespectin' you are!" 

            The voice, so familiar that it stayed with her even in the fastest of sleep, the deepest of dreams, made her blood turn icy and her arms stand out in gooseflesh.  

            "I have to go," she said suddenly, scrambling from her kneeling position into a standing one, stumbling clumsily over the skirts of her dress as she tried to run to the cabin.  "Jack!" she shouted, unable to help herself, the captain suddenly foremost in her mind, crowding out the fear and memories of her brother.

            Anamaria had her feet under her faster than Amelia did, but the weight of standing sent a piercing pain through the back of her head and she landed on her rear back on the planks of the ship, a moan escaping her lips.  "High-nose!" she called, making Amelia turn.  Bending over, the piratess slid a bone-handled knife across the deck of the ship, landing it neatly at the laundress's feet.

            Without a word, Amelia scooped it up and ran the rest of the way to the cabin, where she could see the two men grappling together.

            "Philip!" she shouted, desperate for him to turn his attention to her.  The face that swung toward her was a nightmare caricature of her brother's, swollen and sunburned, the eyes shining and nearly colorless save for the blood in the whites.  

            "There you are, you lying whore," he crooned in a strange, gurgling voice.  "Surely you've gots what you owes your dear brother."

            Holding the knife in plain sight, Amelia nodded her head shakily.  "Aye," she said, not bothering with formalities or even educated speech.  "Got it I 'ave, brother, and what I should have given long before."  Her hand shook, sending silvery beads of oil lamplight bouncing off the well-tended blade and onto the walls.  She wasn't certain she had the fortitude to do what she implied, but if it took his attention away from Jack, she'd do whatever it took.

            "Amelia," Jack's voice was quiet in the small room, shocked as she'd never heard it.  "Turn and take yerself away from here, love, 'tisn't your concern."

            "Love, now, is it?" Philip said, regarding Amelia and then Jack.  "Aye, 's what I thought was happenin' here.  Now who's ready to deal with me?"

            Ignoring him, Amelia walked to her left, bringing her closer to Jack and around her brother.  "This isn't yours, Jack.  Please."

            Jack chose not to answer her, instead focusing on the man in front of them, who stood rubbing absently at his right arm and hand and licking his lips.  

            The moment stood captured as it was, only for a brief second, each member of the vignette locked in concentration on another, and then Philip broke it by moving.  Unable to choose which of his foes he'd rather face, he dived between them, reaching for the lamp on the table.  

            Amelia stepped into him, smelling suddenly the stench of rotten flesh and maddened sweat, and closed her eyes as she felt knife crunch into bone.  She felt her stomach roll over and a cold sweat break over her head, but she kept her eyes on her brothers' as they popped open in surprise.  She saw no pain there, only shock.  

            As he backed away, she could see Jack on the other side of him, grasping the jeweled hilt of his dagger, blood running down the blade and over his fingers and wrist, staining the cuffs of his shirt.  

            If she'd bothered to look down, she'd have seen her own hand looked much the same.  Cuts had scored her thumb and forefinger, her hand having slipped down the blade, and her blood mingled with her brother's, not for the first time in their lives.  

            Philip dropped to his knees, the fight gone out of him, the fierce glitter in his eyes already beginning to dull as his lips tried to form words, his slow-witted brain trying to puzzle out the situation.  He'd never been challenged, and certain never been on the losing end of a battle with his sister.  

            When he slumped to the floor, Amelia let her head drop, her tangled hair hanging in her face.  Clenching her hand into a fist and feeling the blood pumping there, she turned her head slightly, away from the body on the floor.  "Now who's the devil?" she whispered, turning and walking toward the open door.


	22. If you love her

**Author's note: This is a very short chapter, not because I felt rushed, but because this chapter ends precisely where it needs to.  If I go any further, I'll ruin it.  Some things are best said in few words, and hopefully I've done that with this particular segment.  More to come soon, so never fear!  This story's not quite over…**

            She stepped outside the cabin, needing to be away from the smell, away from the sight of her brother lying on Jack's floor.  A nightmare, she told herself, would have felt more realistic. The blood running into her palm had began to dry, caking itself in the creases of her hand, but her sliced fingers were still bleeding freely, dripping onto the deck of the Pearl.

            He'd found her.  Though she'd ran away, sailed miles, he'd managed to find her, to touch the small window of her life where she'd done as she pleased.  He'd managed to ruin her respite, and to what end?  He'd died for it.

            Philip had died, and she had killed him.  Feeling sick, Amelia went to her knees in the center of the quarterdeck, not caring about the pirates who stopped to look at her strangely, not hearing the questions about her hand, the inquiries as to whether or not the miss was all right.  She held her fist out in front of her and watched, transfixed, as her blood continued to drip.

            _Jack, _she thought, the name tearing another hole into her, wider and deeper than the cuts on her hand.  It didn't take an educated woman to know his ship was his life, and in less than a week she'd managed to turn the whole thing hull-side up and sail-side down.  Taking a deep breath, she turned her head to look over her shoulder, using her left hand to brush the hair away from her face.  

            He stood in the doorway of his cabin, where less than a day before they'd been in one another's arms.  His face was grave, no sign of the usual mockery it held, and he watched her intently, mouth set firmly. 

            He hadn't meant for her to see her brother like that, and certainly hadn't meant for her to take any part in finishing it.  Now, seeing the ashy paleness of her face, the blood dripping off her hands, he damned himself.  

            He damned himself for not protecting her as he'd wanted to, for being too proud to give into the instinct that had grown over the past week.  As they stared at each other, frozen with the moment, Jack swore he'd protect her in the best way he knew how.

            "Jack," she said quietly, extending her blood-streaked hand.  Her voice was steady but small, barely carrying over the distance between them.  

            "That's Captain, love," he corrected automatically, crossing the space to her in a few economical steps.  It was neither the time nor the place for games, for taking his time.  He knelt by her side, immediately taking her hand in his and examining the cuts on it.  

            She watched with numb interest as he shook the red kerchief from his sleeve where he'd tucked it.  Not letting go of her hand, he set his teeth in the tightly woven cloth and pulled, rending it down the middle and tying a half around first her thumb then around her forefinger.  When his eyes met hers, she registered that the wickedness had turned to weariness.

            "My fault," she said flatly.  "I killed him."

            He felt his chest tighten at her words, and he reached for her good hand, chafing both of her hands with his and trying to banish the chill that seemed to have set into the short fingers.  "I think we shared in that particular duty, love."  She'd been brave, much braver than he'd ever have given her credit for.  

            But she shook her head at his words, hollow-eyed but insistent.  "I drew him here," Amelia said. 

            Gibbs and another pirate were dragging her brother's body out of the cabin, the weight of it making a horrible sliding noise on the wood.  

            "Take deep breaths, now, love."  Jack stroked his hand down the side of her face, thinking of his father's dead body, Barbarossa's wide-eyed shock in death.  

            She leaned in, resting her forehead against his chest as the tears began to roll silently down her face.  "Thank you," she whispered as she turned her cheek to his chest and felt his heart beating.

            "For what?"  He had to strain to hear her, the noise around them so great and her voice so tiny.

            "For this morning."  She closed her eyes and the weeping stopped, but Jack sat still, kneeling on the deck with her in his arms. 

            By the time he thought to move, night was on them, and Amelia was asleep.

~~~

            He'd deposited her in one of the wardrooms, packing his own blankets down for her to sleep on.  No one challenged him, and not a single one of the men entertained so much as a wayward thought about the lady.  She had shown herself true that day.

            The ship was quiet by the time he went back above, the moonlight slicking over the wood of the ship, making the Pearl glow.  They were still anchored, bobbing up and down in one place on the Caribbean, the Larksong anchored close by.  

            If he'd not had more respect for watercraft, Jack might have burned it just on principle.  But respect aside, he had use for the small ship. 

            It would serve as the last leg of Amelia's passage.  It would be the freedom she'd longed for in the first place.  

            Protecting her at all costs meant sending her away.  

            Young Johnny Sparrow had fled his home as soon as his father died, preferring the anonymity of other places, the clean slate that came from having no memories attached to his surroundings.  Being in a ship meant those surroundings constantly changed, the slate constantly wiped clean.

            The Pearl would never be clean for her.  Neither, he knew, would he, for as she'd withdrawn the knife from her brother's side, she'd seen Jack do the same.  They were bound together by the blood of her brother.  

            The only problem was, Jack thought, they'd been bound before that.


	23. You'll let her go

**Author's note: I never expected the story to come this far, and I know for certain I have one more, and perhaps even two, chapters ahead of me.  This has been such a wonderful ride for me, and I hope you all continue to enjoy reading it!  Another short chapter, as it were, but there are reasons for everything.**

            She was blessed with a dreamless sleep, a sleep borne of shock and guilt as surely as from exhaustion.  When she finally awoke in the last dregs of dawn, Amelia found herself alone.  Though during her stay she'd only awakened to find Jack by her side once, she longed for that now.  

            A chill running its course down her spine, Amelia pulled the blankets tighter around her in vain.  They did nothing to warm her.  

            She'd spent nights as a teenaged girl praying and plotting for the very thing that she'd accomplished the day before, to kill her brother, to give him the things he'd given her in one walloping, well-deserved dose.  Amelia had dreamed countless ways of ridding herself of the large, hurtful hands, the frequently-hurled insults, the visiting friends with traveling hands.  But it had always been just a dream, just an idea.  

            She climbed out of the cot she'd been placed in, placing one foot in front of another to take her out of the small room.  Night chill had set upon the ship, making the boards creak and pop with their changing temperature, and every noise had Amelia's head whipping around, seeking trouble.

            After what seemed like ages, after dozens of imagined dangers and phantoms crowding her head, Amelia made it to the quarter deck as though one sleepwalking, heading toward one particular goal.  

~~~

            "Pick two men and send them to the Larksong.  Tell them it's an extended leave."  Jack addressed Gibbs without looking at him, his eyes cast straight ahead as he leaned heavily on the wheel.

            Gibbs narrowed his eyes, noting the slightly swollen flesh under all the kohl, the telltale bags that spoke of unrest.  "Aye," he said, suddenly wishing for the captain's talkative nature, the never-ending gab.  "D'ye mind if I ask what they be doin' on the Larksong?"

            Finally Jack turned to him, mouth pursed as he tried to control the temper that wanted to lash out, the anger that had been simmering in him for long hours.  Shaking it off with a large sigh, he lowered his head and looked up at Gibbs through thick lashes.  "We're fulfilling a promise we made to a lady, Gibbs.  'Tis a day of note, no doubt, that I will actually have admitted to making a promise, much less keeping it."  He turned again and cast his eyes to the sea.  "I won't hear any differently on this, savvy?"

            With a grunt instead of a response, Gibbs made his way below.

            "What are you going to do with it?"  She spoke from his left, and when he turned he saw her twisting her hands together, twining the fingers in a complicated tangle that mirrored her nerves.

            "With what, love?"  He forced himself to look away from her, to look careless.  Shadows had appeared in her face where there had been none before, and he was afraid to look any further for fear the fire had been extinguished at last.  

            No need to rush that particular discovery, he figured.

            "With the ship," Amelia said insistently, feeling stronger just for having seen him.  She placed her left hand on the wheel beside his, painfully aware that he inched his fingers away from hers.  "The Larksong."

            To tell or not to tell.  Jack reached up a hand and rubbed his eyes, smudging kohl into the already-stained creases of his fingers.  Finally he took his hand away from his face and settled it on one of the trinkets in his hair, his fingers rolling around the familiar object comfortingly.  

            "'Tis your ship, love, I've no right to do anything with it," he said evasively.  

            "As though that's stopped you before," she retorted, marveling at his avoidance.  All she'd wanted, all she'd needed was this moment.  There was nothing else she needed, and nothing else that would squash the paranoid helplessness that was coursing through her.

            She needed comfort, and all she was getting was captaining.  So she fixed her eyes on the side of his face, tracing her eyes over the tanned skin, the high cheekbones, the concave cheeks, knowing he would feel her gaze and turn whether he wanted to or not.

            A man's vanity was an easy button to push. 

            He turned to her as she was staring at his mouth, his eyebrows raised.  "Well, love, find anything you like?"

            "Plenty," she said, shaking her head.  "Jack, please.  Answer me.  What are you going to do with the ship?  With _my _ship?"  

            One of the crewmen dropped a bucket on the deck behind her, and Jack felt sick as he saw her start and jerk her head around, searching for the source of the sound.  

            "You'll do whatever you want with it, I suppose, as that's what people do with their possessions when they've been given free reign," he said casually.  "I've sent a few men over to prepare things for ye, to make sure things are sound on 'er."  Like an afterthought, he added, "I wouldn't send ye out on a busted wreck."

            So intent was he on keeping himself in check that he didn't notice her fingers tighten on the wheel, the way it was no longer a handrest but a support.  "S-send me out?"  The volume was gone from her voice, and her eyes searched his frantically, but he was looking away again.

            "Aye.  A pirate ship's not a place for the likes of ye, Amelia.  Told ye that from day one, I did, and if you failed to listen, I can hardly be blamed for that, as 'tis sure as the sun rises and sets I told you that and plenty more."  He tugged at the braids of his beard and chuffed out something that would have been classified as a chuckle, had it not been so sardonic.  "The one thing ye can't accuse Captain Jack Sparrow of is under-informin' ye."

            "No," she said, her voice curiously distant.  "Maybe for other things, but never for that."

            He looked at her then, the hurt evident in his eyes, but it was her turn to ignore him.

            "You wish for me to leave."  She stated it, turning slightly so she wouldn't have to look at him, the knuckles of her hand turning white with their grip on the wheel.

            "Aye, love, thought I made that perfectly clear."  Seeing the slump of her shoulders, he covered her hand with his.  "Listen," he implored, his voice breaking over the two syllables, wavering between Jack and the boy long gone.  "'Tisn't the place for you, what with what's just happened.  "Tisn't good for you, love, you need somewhere to… heal.  Somewhere to forget about all this nonsense."

            She flexed her fingers under his, releasing the smooth wood she'd been gripping and sliding her hand out from under his.  Though he couldn't see her face, a peculiar, glittering smile split the pretty features in two.  

            "Nonsense, eh?"  Keeping her back mostly to him, she nodded her head, the dark, flyaway hair whipping around her face.  "Aye.  Nonsense 'tis, indeed."

            She began to walk away, then paused only steps from him.  She debated not facing him, but turned and looked him square in the eye, fire burning as surely as it ever had, the events of the day before paling in comparison with the betrayal, the abandonment she knew she was being faced with now.  "Say good-bye, _Captain.  I'll ready my things, and I'll not wish to see you when I'm done with that.  If it's off yer bloody __boat yer wantin' me, then it's off I'll be, since it seems ye know best for me, as ye've professed from the moment ye caught me up in the street."  _

            But even as he parted his dry lips to say good-bye, she'd walked away.


	24. Love or money

**Author's note: Here's your reward for tolerating several short chapters; it's one a bit longer than my usual.  And here's the kicker, faithful readers… it's the last.  Well, very nearly.  It's the last full chapter, but because I love a bloody good tale just as much as the rest of ye, there's an epilogue coming.  I can't express enough how incredibly wonderful, flattering, and constructive your reviews have all been, and I hope you enjoy this chapter.**

            It was too bloody quiet.

            Jack prowled the deck of his ship, waiting for any sign of her.  He'd be hanged like the pirate he was before he would let her have the last word on things.

            He'd expected her to take a bit more time to recuperate, at least a little more time before she was back to being… shrewish.  He was trying to do the right thing, for once in his life, and the blue-stocking wouldn't even let him do that.

            "Gibbs!" he shouted, stopping in front of the wheel of his ship.  It seemed to take an inordinately long time for Gibbs to appear, and when he did he looked decidedly unconcerned that his captain had called for him.

            "Yes, cap'n?"  

            "You know, Gibbs, I was just wondering where, precisely, nearly every single member of my crew has disappeared to this early in the evening.  Though it has, on more than one occasion, crossed my mind that it would be nice to give them all a long soaking in the Caribbean, I've not done so, and so it behooves me to ask where they've all gone."  When Gibbs merely stared at him for a long moment, Jack threw his hands in his air, his eyes widening.  "Welcome to the Black Pearl, sir," he said mockingly.  "Is it a tour ye'd like, then?"  

            Gibbs eyed his captain darkly.  "Aye, that'd be nice," he grumbled.  "Keep your petticoats in place, cap'n, I's only tryin' to figure out how to phrase it to ye."

            "I've an idea, Gibbs.  You phrase it in your ordinarily delightful way, and I'll translate in my head."  His patience was wearing thin, and he couldn't fathom Gibbs's attitude.

            "Well, sir, the men are all over checkin' on the Larksong.  Ye know, seein' as it's sound an' all.  It looks like a right heap, it does, and so they're figurin' things out fer the missy."  Seeing Jack's face turn an unusual shade of red, he added, "They'll be back."

            He wondered how he was even capable of surprise anymore.  They'd gone, without orders, to check on the ship for Amelia.  Closing his eyes, he turned so the slight breeze blew in his face.  "That's a mighty fine liking ever' man on this crew has taken to her, then," he said, the muscles in his jaw tight.

            Gibbs smiled wickedly.  "Aye," he agreed enthusiastically.  "She's a corker."

            "I'll be sure to take note of that, Gibbs, since the last opinion of yours I heard—and did not ask for—stated she was bad luck."

            "Ye didn't hearken to me then, either," Gibbs grumbled, walking away with an uneven step.  

            As soon as he was gone, Jack let his shoulders sag and his eyes open.  What would he do with a ship back in order, anyway?

~~~

            She emerged less than an hour later, never facing him, walking briskly toward the several crewmen waiting to row her to the Larkspur.  One of the crewmen handed her a hat he'd apparently dug up from below, and she tied it on quickly, several strands of dark hair teasing in the wind.  

            He clenched his fists at his sides, debating on whether or not to approach her.  Though she'd told him not to, it hardly mattered.  He'd things to say to her, and she'd by God listen.  

            He at least wanted to see her face one more time before she sailed away from him.

            "Hold," he called striding across the ship.  Instead of doing so, however, his men loaded her into the boat and began to lower it.

            "Cap'n, sir, I have a question fer ye," the cook, almost always confined to the kitchen, stepped in his way.  "About mess fer tonight."

            "Move aside, Parker," Jack said, trying to get past the large man.  He stepped to his left just as Parker stepped in the same direction, then reversed himself just as Parker did the same.  "Move!" he finally bellowed, storming past the cook.  But the boat had already hit the water, the men rowing in long, fast strokes.

            She kept her head down, refusing to look up at him even as she grew farther from the ship where so much had happened, and Jack struck a blow at the side of the ship, cursing loudly for his entire crew to hear.  

            "I've a question," he said suddenly, his voice deceptively pleasant as he turned to face the men on his ship.  "Is my voice loud enough?  Can ye all hear me quite well?"  When all he got were nods, he spread his arms far in the air.  "Good!" he exclaimed, nodding his head enthusiastically, the tricorne bobbing up and down.  "In fact, I think that's wonderful.  So why is it that just now, when I gave an order to hold, every last of ye acted like 'twas no more'n the braying of an ass?" 

            "Because 'twasn't any more than that."  Small, even steps neared him, striking a pattern of noise on the otherwise silent deck.  "You know, I'd hoped, at the very least, you'd fling yourself into the water after me.  But perhaps you can't swim."  

            Jack stood where he was, his back to the impossible voice, his fingers stroking the butt of his gun.  He'd shoot her, by God, and not pause to think about it.  He turned then, raising sparking, dark-rimmed eyes to cool, light brown ones.  

            It was the second time she'd made a fool of him in front of his crew.

            "You might want to go ahead and shout 'you're welcome' to Anamaria over there."  Amelia nodded her head in the direction of the Larksong.  "As you've just given her a ship and the beginning of her very own crew."  A smile played about her lips as she brushed her hands down the men's clothing she'd traded Anamaria for.  "What a fool you are, Jack."

            "_Captain," he grated out, completely at a loss for words.  _

            "You wanted me to leave, aye?"  She stood in front of him, hands on hips, eyes flashing even as she smiled.  It had been satisfying, so completely satisfying, to see him scamper across the deck of his own ship, trying to say good-bye as though she were a dim-witted strumpet who'd have obeyed his commands.  

            "Now more than I did," he said negligently, the words popping out before he could stop them.  He stood hipshot, one foot braced to the side, arms crossed over his chest as he looked at her expressionlessly.  

            She stepped toe-to-toe with him and eyed him thoughtfully, aware of every crewmember's eyes on her.  They had helped her, down to the last man.  It was they who had readied things not just for Amelia, but also for Anamaria.  It was they who agreed to help keep Jack away for just long enough to get Anamaria to the Larksong.  

            Amelia had made her a trade, coming to a gentlewomen's agreement in the stuffy wardroom below decks.

            "You take the ship," Amelia insisted.  "And the clothes, and the Donne.  In exchange for a promise."

            "Ye mean in exchange for Jack," the pretty pirate had said, laughing as Amelia's color rose.

            Ignoring the jibe, Amelia had continued with her terms of the trade.  "Sail it when you'd like, take her wherever you want to, Anamaria.  But go to shore, get a job."  With a flash of inspiration, she grinned.  "There's a bookshop on the main thoroughfare.  The proprietor's a friend of Jack.  Maybe you can do something with that."

            For the first time in a long time, Anamaria felt a small glimmer of hope.  "Aye," she had whispered.  "Maybe."

            Now, standing in front of Jack and all his crewmembers, she did what so many others before her had done.

            Amelia reared back her hand and slapped Jack across his hollow cheek, knowing she deserved the stinging in her hand just as much as he deserved the pain in his face.  He hissed but did not move, bringing his eyes steady back to hers after his head had rocked back.

            "That," she said, ignoring the murmurs from the crew, "Was for trying to make me leave."  

            She stepped again, standing on her toes to brush her lips over the reddening spot on his cheek, and then over his lips.  "And that was also for trying to make me leave."

            "Aye, and with my face throbbing like a bitch in heat, I can't possibly see how 'tis I'd have wanted to send you away 'tall," he retorted, being fully honest even in sarcasm.  This was the woman who had snuck onto his ship, and the woman who had followed him on shore to make sure he wasn't doing anything wayward.

            This was the woman he'd bedded, and the same woman who had killed her brother.  Nothing had been taken away, only added, and he couldn't think why he'd feared otherwise.  A fool he'd been, indeed.

            "So it's not askin' me to stay yer doin', then?" she asked, slurring her words and adopting his affected pose.  "Even though ye loves me, surely 'nough."

            Jack tilted his head down, his eyes wide in disbelief.  "I beg your pardon, love, you'll have to repeat that last part, as I'm quite certain you didn't say what I think I heard you say.  It's a presumptuous lass y'are, and though that surprises me not, presumptions can easily be carried into inappropriate territory."  He held up a finger as though counseling her and immediately regretted it when she grasped it in one of her small fists and bent, making his eyes pop wider.

            "Do you never stop nattering?" she asked exasperatedly.  "You kept me aboard, you kept me in your cabin."  Steeling herself against the blush she knew would come, she pressed on.  "You kept me in your bed, Jack Sparrow, and you killed my tormentor for me… _with me.  If you're not a smart enough man… if you're not a trig enough captain… to know that you've feelings for me, and I for you, then you're not the man I thought you were, savvy?"  She released his hand and shoved, this time succeeding in making him stumble, if only a bit._

            "Foul-mouthed shrew!" he exclaimed by way of a response, trying to hold back the grin that wanted to come. 

            "It's keepin' 'er y'ought to be doin', cap'n," Gibbs exclaimed from the back of the crowd, pausing to spit on the deck.

            Trying to ignore the fact that the man had clearly just spit on his Pearl, Jack turned and addressed the man pleasantly.  "I'm sorry, Gibbs, be a good man and repeat what you just said."

            "Keep 'er," he bellowed.  "We've not ever had the Pearl without a woman aboard, not since you got 'er back from Barbossa.  Could be they're good luck."  

            Jack nodded, satisfied with the conclusion, tired of pretense, and snaked a lean arm out, pulling Amelia flush to his body.  The man's clothing she wore, tight in places it oughn't have been, was doing a great deal to improve Jack's mood.

            "You've made a grave mistake, love," he said, looking down at her.  "For I'd sooner have my tongue cut out before I would ever admit you were right about anything."  Grasping her hair in his hand in a gesture quickly becoming familiar, he lowered his face to hers.  "Is it passage yer wantin', love?"

            "No," she said steadily, relief all but flooding through her. 

"I'm a pirate, Miss Hamilton."  He echoed his words from the first night on the docks, liking the symmetry of coming full-circle, of sailing at least once into the port where he started from.  He lowered his voice for her ears only and watched as the blush masked her freckles.  "A woman on a pirate ship doesn't ride like a queen.  Though she would, in fact, ride quite a bit."

            "I do love you, Jack," she said, tilting her head back a fraction of an inch further so her eyes could meet his.  "For some reason."

            He let go of her hair, smoothing his hand down it, and grinned then, charming and quick, feline and satisfied.  "I know," he said simply, sliding his lips across hers teasingly.  "And that's Captain to you."

~~Stay tuned for an epilogue…~~


	25. Epilogue preceded by rant but followed b...

**Author's Note: **Warning… rant coming… **Just recently, I received the following review: Sorry, I read the whole story and it was so bloody Mary-Suish I wanted to vomit. Sorry but it's the truth!  This presented me with the following quandaries… one, if it was so Mary Sue-ish it made you want to vomit, why, pray tell, did you read the whole thing?  And moreover, I'd be really quite obligated if someone explained to me what a Mary Sue is, because the impression I'm getting is that she's pretty much any female character whom a given reader grows tired of.  No offense to anyone who takes the "Mary Sue" label seriously, but as soon as there's a true standard definition, I'd love to hear it.  

I have heard that Mary Sue's a charming girl who is an idealized but unrealistic version of her author.  Well, I've got news for you.  Every great fiction writer, from commercial to literary, will tell you that characters (if they're three-dimensional) always contain part of their author.  Amelia, however, isn't very much like me except in the fact that I like to consider myself intelligent.  Similarities end there.  Do some research, and you'll see that an uncommon number of women in that century were downtrodden by men and by the expectations around them.  Self-education was far more common than you might believe, and so was abuse.  Aside from that, I must admit, the biggest pleasure of this story was not Amelia for me—it was writing Jack.

Where, might you ask, is this review?

I deleted it because the reviewer, anonymous save for the name "Alex", left me no helpful comments at all, no ideas on how to change or improve what I had already done, and that, readers, is what I call UNCONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM.  

Like it or leave it, kids and folks.

If you're still with me, enjoy the epilogue.  I appreciate all of you more than you can know, and my faithful readers (and the few new ones I've picked up in the past few days) are wonderful.  I hope you've enjoyed my tale, vomit-inducing or no.  I have enjoyed writing it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Months later 

            She walked through the darkening streets, casting a worried eye to the setting sun.  It wasn't like him to miss a sunset, no matter what mischief he was up to, and so his absence could likely mean only one thing.

            Clutching the small leather pouch, its contents clinking and shifting, Amelia turned corners and crossed alleys reflexively, knowing exactly where she was heading.  Exasperation warred with amusement as she trod up the steps to the gaol.  Her demeanor changed the second she walked into the squat, sturdy building; her eyes went wide and worried, glistening with unshed tears, and she pressed a hand to her throat in mock breathlessness. 

            Jack needed a damned good excuse, she judged as she saw him sitting behind the barred doors, hands crossed behind his head as he whistled a tune carelessly.  She spared him only the smallest glance, but that was more than enough time for him to tip Amelia a wink.

            Biting the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling, she registered that the gaoler was addressing her.

            "Somethin' you were needin', ma'am?"  He had the tired, worn look about him that suggested a life of submission to the British soldiers with little or no thanks.  The law in the islands always bled up to red.

            "You found him!" she gushed, propelling herself forward and clutching the thin man's arm.  "Oh, thank heavens, sir, you've no idea how worried we've been!"

            "Worried?" the man repeated, bushy graying brows drawing together.  

            "Yes!"  She looked over her shoulder at Jack, the only prisoner in the building.  He _would _have to pick trouble when there was none else going on.  "You know," she said, affecting a confidential tone but not bothering to lower her voice, "We—that is, his family—we don't let him out very often.  _He's really quite disturbed."  _She said this last in a whisper loud enough to carry all the way to Jack, who cleared his throat but managed to keep his mouth shut.  A miracle if ever there were one, in her opinion.  

She kept her eyes on the watery blue ones of the jailer and extended her hands toward him pleadingly.  "Surely you'll release him to me, sir?  He's really no harm to anyone, and we'll keep a closer watch on him."  

The gaoler sighed heavily, crossing his arms over his chest.  "Ma'am, he tried to seal arms from a soldier.  An officer's sword, actually.  I don't know as that's so harmless."

Shooting a sharp glance over her shoulder, Amelia widened her eyes at Jack warningly.  "Whyever would he do such a thing?" she said sweetly, rolling her eyes back to the gaoler, who grunted.

            "Says he's a pirate," he said laconically, stretching to look at Jack around Amelia.  "Reckon he looks a mite like one, too."

            "But his sword was so pretty," Jack spoke up liltingly, his first words since she'd entered.  He kept his eyes wide and guileless as she turned once again to glare at him, but the evil gleam was there.

            Irritated that he'd nearly made her laugh, Amelia smiled sweetly at the gaoler.  "Surely, sir, a smart man such as yourself sees that can't possibly be true.  He's clearly mad; look at his hair."

            "You've a point there," the man conceded, much to Amelia's glee.  He stood slowly, drawing the large ring of keys from a nail above the table.  When he hesitated, eyeing Jack warily, Amelia pressed the leather pouch she held into his hand.  His eyes wide, he quickened his pace toward the door, unlocking it and stepping back.

            Jack stood and exited the cell, pausing to grab the gaoler's cheeks in his hands and giving him a large, noisy kiss on the forehead.  "It's a lovely man y'are," he said soberly.  Looking at Amelia, he blinked widely.  "Do we get to see the ponies?" he said vacantly, latching onto her arm with a grip that made her wince.

            They broke into a half-run the second they were out of the gaol, Amelia laughing breathlessly and Jack grinning like a madman.  At a safe distance, they slowed and he spun her around so she fitted perfectly into his arms.

            "Shrew," he said bitingly, looking down at her.  "No need to pick on a man's vanity, love, when ye know he's sensitive about his locks."  So saying, he tugged a thick, beaded piece of hair in his fingers.

            "I'll pick on whatever I like if it gets you out," she retorted.  "And while you were busy trying to lift a sword off of the local lobsterback, I found some things out."  

            "Industrious lass that y'are," he pointed out, taking her hand and resuming their walk.  

            "Anamaria's not here," she said simply.  The island that had seen their battle with Daniel Carrington and Philip had changed little since they'd left it, and Peter Yancey had been wonderful company for Amelia the better part of the evening.  

            "I'm sorry, love," Jack said, his eyes already searching the horizon as they neared the docks.  He knew she'd hoped for Anamaria to take up with Yancey and make an honest living, but some things never changed.

            "She's on a trip for him," Amelia said.  "Sailing 'round the world to find rare books for Yancey."  That got his attention, his dark eyes narrow with envy as he looked at her.  "And likely doing a bit of thieving here and there."  She reached into the pocket of the cloak she wore and tossed him something.  "There now.  A gift returned."  She'd already read _Taming of the Shrew to tatters.  _

            "_Robinson Crusoe," he read aloud, raising an eyebrow at her.  "What's it about, love?"_

            It was her turn to smile, a bit of his wickedness long since having bled into her nature.  "'Tis about a man who's stranded on an island.  Pity he didn't have any rum-runners to help him out."  With an arch look, she stepped off the dock into the boat waiting for them.

            Ignoring the jab, he eyed the skyline of the town and looked down at her in the boat.  "Love?  How long, precisely, do you think it will take yon gaoler to realize you handed him a pouch full of scrap?" 

            She rolled her eyes to the sky as though thinking and shrugged.  "Probably any time now."

            Laughing, he hopped in after her, making the boat rock so wildly she shrieked, then hunkered down face-to-face with her, his wicked eyes suddenly sober, the devilish mouth soft.  "I love you, you know."

            Her breath caught, just a bit, and she barely managed to keep her composure.  "Yes," she said.  "I know."  

            And by the time they were back on the Pearl, secure in the captain's cabin and warm in the captain's bed, a gaoler was trying desperately to explain to British soldiers how, precisely, he'd let the Caribbean's most dastardly pirate slip through his fingers.

    _________     

    /                   |     |\                                           _____

  /                     |     |  \                                         /          \                                      /\

/                       |     |   )                                      /                                                /   ) 

                        |     | /                                       (                                                 |  /

                        |     |  ____        _____               \___                                         |/

  __                  |     |/         \      /          \              /                __   __                    |

  \                     |     |            |    |______|             /               /     \/    \          ____ |

    \                   |     |            |    |                        (               /       |      \       /         \|

     \_________/     |            |     \_____              \______/         |       \___\____/\___/

**Appendix—Fun facts and attributions**

_I'm a research fiend, and so there are a few attributions I'd like to make.  Also, fun fact—I only actually saw _Pirates of the Caribbean _once, and so it's wonderful to hear that I actually did things right.  To my faithful reviewers, the ones who never failed to point out where I was wrong and praise where I was right—you are each and every one of you awesome.  You know who you are—if I tried to name each of you, I'd more likely than not miss someone, and that would be upsetting to me._

_All my slang came from the site of The __Georgia__ Refugees.  I'd put the link in, but it never appears, but I HIGHLY suggest looking them up… the slang alone is well worth it. _

_As follows is the full text of the Donne poem I used, usually simply titled "Song."_

_Go and catch a falling star,  
Get with child a mandrake root,  
Tell me, where all past years are,  
Or who cleft the Devil's foot,  
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,  
Or to keep off envy's stinging,  
And find  
What wind  
Serves to advance an honest mind. _

_If thou be'est born to strange sights,  
Things invisible to see,  
Ride ten thousand days and nights,  
Till age snow white hairs on thee,  
Thou, when thou return'st, wilt tell me  
All strange wonders that befell thee,  
And swear  
No where  
Lives a woman true, and fair. _

_If thou find'st one, let me know,  
Such a pilgrimage were sweet;  
Yet do not, I would not go,  
Though at next door we might meet,  
Though she were true, when you met her,  
And last, till you write your letter,  
Yet she  
Will be  
False, ere I come, to two, or three. _


End file.
